Preamble

The House met at half-past Nine o'clock

PRAYERS

[MR. SPEAKER in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions — HOME DEPARTMENT

Special Constabulary

Mr. Hawksley: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he has any proposals to alter the structure of the Special Constabulary.

The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. Patrick Mayhew): The role of the Special Constabulary has recently been reviewed by the Police Advisory Board. It considered that the role of the Special Constabulary as a valuable supplement to the regular police and as a link between the police and the public should remain unchanged. My right hon. Friend has no plans to alter the present organisation of the Special Constabulary.

Mr. Hawksley: My hon. and learned Friend's answer is disappointing, in view of the very small number of applicants. My own police authority, West Mercia, has 1,348 established posts available and 334 special constables in post—

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman must ask a question instead of giving information.

Mr. Hawksley: In view of the small number of applicants for special constable duty, will my hon. and learned Friend consider the proposals that were made to change the name of the force, possibly to pay a bounty, and to increase the responsibilities of special constables?

Mr. Mayhew: I share my hon. Friend's concern for the recruitment to the Special Constabulary. There were 15,160 special constables at the end of December 1982. That was 182 more than a year before and the first increase in strength for 30 years.
A change in name was considered, but it was thought that to call the Special Constabulary the Reserve Police, for example, would give rise to operational confusion, so that suggestion has been rejected.

Demonstrations

Mr. Chapman: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if any estimate has been made of police man hours spent on controlling demonstrations in the Metropolitan police area in the last year.

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. William Whitelaw): The Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis has estimated that in 1982 some 776,000 man hours were involved in policing demonstrations which required the presence of 100 or more police officers.

Mr. Chapman: Is my right hon. Friend aware that those figures will surprise and dismay many Londoners? Does he agree that when hundreds of policemen have to be transferred from the outer London areas into central London for such demonstrations, that not only disrupts the police plan to fight crime but is unfair to Londoners, because their streets are riot being policed properly, and is an increasing burden on their rates?

Mr. Whitelaw: All those points are undoubtedly well founded. The problem is that in a free society people have the right to demonstrate. If that right is abused, these are the results of abusing it, but it is a freedom that we have kept in this country.

Mr. Pitt: Will the Home Secretary tell the House when he intends to increase the establishment of the Metropolitan police to a significant extent to enable it to deal adequately with the issue of public order and to put more policemen on the streets?

Mr. Whitelaw: Those who seek to demonstrate should realise the cost involved. The Commissioner estimates the cost of overtime payments to be §740,000. That has to be taken into account.
I have made a small increase in the Metropolitan police establishment and now that, for the first time in its history, it has reached its full establishment the Commissioner will study how to make the police as effective as possible in London. When he has done that he will decide what the establishment should be, and we shall consider that figure.

Mr. Greenway: May I have my right hon. Friend's assurance that the projected visit of the mayor of Moscow and other placemen from that city, following the GLC's invitation, will not involve undue time and cost in policing? The visit, which Londoners do not want, will cost hundreds of pounds in rates. It is related to a spurious cause—peace—in regard to which the GLC has no honest remit.

Mr. Whitelaw: I cannot give my hon. Friend the assurance for which he asks. It is extremely awkward and could not possibly be undertaken without considerable policing activity.

Civil Defence

Mr. Cyril D. Townsend: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department when he next proposes to discuss with the Greater London council the Government's plans for the protection of the population of Greater London against a possible nuclear attack.

Mr. Mayhew: I last met representatives of the Greater London council on 28 February to discuss civil defence matters. We have no plans for a further meeting.

Mr. Townsend: Does my hon. and learned Friend appreciate that my constituents are contemptuous of, rather than conned by, the frivolity of the GLC's so-called nuclear-free zone, and that they are greatly concerned to learn that the GLC emergency planning unit has been reduced by 23 to six? Will my hon. and learned Friend do all he can to instil a sense of realism and responsibility into the GLC Labour leadership over this important matter?

Mr. Mayhew: I agree with my hon. Friend. The GLC has followed the exhortation of the Labour party national executive committee to provide the bare minimum of


protection to its ratepayers consistent with the present inadequate law. That is why my right hon. Friend proposes to bring new regulations before Parliament after Easter. At my last meeting the GLC assured me that it would at all times comply with the law, however it may be changed.

Mr. Neil Thorne: If my hon. and learned Friend fails to get the action that he has just mentioned, will he consider transferring this responsibility to the London boroughs or the Home Office?

Mr. Mayhew: My hon. Friend, who takes a great interest in these important matters, knows that there are powers under the existing regulation to enforce compliance with the law. It is in this country's tradition that local authorities comply with and do not defy the law. Having regard to the assurances that I was given by the GLC the other day, which I have just mentioned, I have no reason to believe that it will not comply with the law that Parliament has approved.

Crime Statistics

Mr. William Hamilton: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make a statement on the latest statistics for serious crime; and what further steps he intends to take to deal with the problem.

Mr. Whitelaw: The continued rise in the number of notifiable offences recorded by the police is of course a matter for great concern. As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said in reply to a question by the hon. Member for Ormskirk (Mr. Kilroy-Silk) on 29 March, we are seeking to counter crime through our continued positive support for the agencies of law and order. In particular, chief constables are being encouraged to concentrate their resources more effectively on specific crime problems. We are also giving a lead in encouraging and developing initiatives aimed at reducing crime which involve all sectors of the community, particularly at a local level.

Mr. Hamilton: Despite all those activities, does the Home Secretary recall the speeches that he and others in the Government made just before the last election blaming the crime statistics on the Labour Government? Crime has increased substantially since then. Is the Home Secretary not thoroughly ashamed of those speeches? Does he now believe that because of the manifest failure of his policies and his kidology of the electorate that the Conservatives could solve the problem, he should resign?

Mr. Whitelaw: I do not accept any of those points.

Mr. William Hamilton: The right hon. Gentleman should read his speeches.

Mr. Wrigglesworth: Why does the Home Secretary think that serious crime has risen to a record level of 3 million during the past year?

Mr. Whitelaw: I believe that there are a great many factors. Crime all over the world is one.

Mr. Snape: Any excuse.

Mr. Whitelaw: It is no use the hon. Member for West Bromwich, East (Mr. Snape) arguing that. Our position is a great deal better than that of many other countries. Secondly, there are many problems to do with education,

the family and the home and I accept at once that social conditions are another factor. Taken together, those are all the reasons.

Sir Edward Gardner: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the enforcement of civil order and the fight against serious crime require that the police be given sufficient and clear powers to enable them to fulfil their duty? Does he agree that the powers of search and arrest contained in the Police and Criminal Evidence Bill are basic and essential to the proper discharge by the police of their duties?

Mr. Whitelaw: I agree with my hon. and learned Friend. The Police and Criminal Evidence Bill, which gives these powers, is, of course, balanced between giving the police the powers that they need to prosecute crime successfully and the rights of the individual. I regret that a great many people who have not read the Bill persist in saying that the safeguards are inadequate. We shall seek to reassure everyone that what is being done is fair and that some of their fears are misguided.

Mr. Hattersley: I urge the Home Secretary to take the question of my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, Central (Mr. Hamilton) seriously. He has confused his apologies. The world economic position is the apology for the economy, not for police failures, for which he is responsible. Will he read again what the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis said yesterday, which is that the improvement in crime detection and prevention, which we all want, will come about only when police and people work together? Why does the Home Secretary persist in piloting through the House of Commons a Bill that will divide the police from the people even more than they are divided now?

Mr. Whitelaw: On the first point, I have not confused them at all. On the second point, it is surprising that the right hon. Gentleman, of all people, should say that a Bill that lays down the idea of consultative committees to bring the police and the public closer is something that will do harm. I do not accept that it will, for the reasons that I have given.

Telephone Tapping

Mr. Cryer: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make a statement on progress of the work of the judicial monitor on telephone tapping.

Mr. Whitelaw: The judicial monitor of the arrangements for the interception of communications set out in Cmnd. 7873, currently Lord Bridge of Harwich, continues to undertake his task in accordance with the terms of reference set out in my statement of 1 April 1980.

Mr. Cryer: Does the Home Secretary accept that the position on telephone tapping is unsatisfactory and, as he acknowledges, a serious intrusion into an individual's privacy? In the interests of public accountability and acceptance, will he arrange that telephone tapping is warrantable only in cases of serious crime? Will he arrange for the judicial monitor's report to be published, to ensure full and proper accountability to the House and to remove any fears that there is any abuse of telephone tapping?

Mr. Whitelaw: I do not accept that there are abuses. When the judicial monitor system was introduced it was


made clear that the first report would be published and that if any subsequent report proposed significant changes they would be reported to the House. That remains the position.

Mr. Richard Shepherd: Will my right hon. Friend give further consideration to what seemed a reasonable amendment tabled by Opposition Members in Committee on the Telecommunications Bill, to give legislative form and protection to individuals on phone tapping?

Mr. Whitelaw: The Government's position has been set out for a number of years. I set it out the last time the subject was debated, in April 1981. We have no proposals to change it.

Nuclear Shelters (Manchester)

Mr. Eastham: asked the Secretary of State for the home Department how many nuclear shelters there are in the Greater Manchester area; and what is the total number of people they can hold.

Mr. Mayhew: There are no public nuclear shelters in Greater Manchester.

Mr. Eastham: Is it not a disgrace that the Minister should talk about civil defence and at the same time admit that Manchester with a population of 2·75 million has no nuclear shelters? It proves that so-called civil defence is a complete sham. The Government know that there is no civil defence against nuclear weapons.

Mr. Mayhew: The hon. Gentleman is wrong. He knows, or should know, that we must plan against conventional attack, no less than against nuclear attack. On any scale of attack on this country that can be foreseen as having any conceivable military purpose there would be millions of survivors. It is everyone's humanitarian duty to plan against that eventuality.

Mr. Peter Bottomley: Are not hon. Members from Manchester trying to have it both ways? They say that there should be no civil defence and nuclear defence and then they criticise the Government when they discover that one area has no nuclear shelters.

Mr. Mayhew: Oh, yes. That is not new. I wonder whether the Manchester city council, which is the flagship of the so-called nuclear-free zone council movement, might consider proposing to protect its people—after all it is two-thirds of Manchester's police committee—against crime by proposing a burglar-free zone.

Prison Statistics

Mr. Knox: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many people are serving sentences in Her Majesty's prisons at the present time.

Mr. Dubs: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what is the latest total for the prison population; and how many people are currently being held in police or court cells because there is no room in prison.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. David Mellor): The total number of inmates serving sentences in prison department establishments in England and Wales was 36,300 on 28 February 1983. The latest total for the prison population was 44,700 on 18 March 1983, in addition to which 323 persons were held in police cells.

Mr. Knox: Does my hon. Friend propose to take any new initiatives to reduce that excessively high figure?

Mr. Mellor: The Government have been tackling this matter in a number of ways. I point to the largest prison building programme this century. We are also recruiting more prison officers. There is provision for a further 900 this year. We support warmly the efforts of the Lord Chief Justice and the judiciary to make it clear to courts that prison sentences should be imposed only when absolutely necessary and should be no longer than necessary.

Mr. Dubs: Does the Minister agree that we are on the verge of an explosion in our prison system because of the tremendous overcrowding in establishments up and down the country? Does he further agree that it is intolerable that because prisons are full several hundred prisoners should be kept in police and courts cells in conditions where they can have no visitors and where there are inadequate facilities for exercise and washing? Do we not need some quick action by the Government to tackle the problem?

Mr. Mellor: The hon. Gentleman does not say what quick action he requires. No quick action is possible to remedy the decline in the state of prisons that has taken place throughout this century. We have put that into reverse by a massive injection of funds, both for the prison building programme and for refurbishments. However, one cannot refurbish prison wings without closing them temporarily, which puts pressure on police cells.

Mr. Beaumont-Dark: Is my hon. Friend aware that among those in prison is Myra Hindley, who, with Ian Brady, committed crimes beyond belief? We are being led to believe that she is being sent to a softer prison. May we have an assurance that that is not a prelude to parole and that although Ian Brady and Myra Hindley may look for forgiveness in the next world, they should not have it here at the expense of those who suffered so cruelly?

Mr. Mellor: Miss Hindley had been in Durham prison for six years and it is the normal practice to move long-term prisoners to other prisons from time to time. I have no reason to believe that the regimes are materially different from one prison to another. As for Miss Hindley's future, I have nothing to add to the full answer given by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary on Friday 29 January 1982.

Mr. McNally: Is the Minister aware that many prison officers in Strangeways believe that they are sitting on the lid of a pressure cooker which will blow one day unless action is taken? For the Government to sit pat on the idea of building two new prisons a year will not serve the problem of older prisons such as Strangeways.
Has the hon. Gentleman considered the idea of an amnesty to thin out the population and to take pressure off the prisons and prison officers?

Mr. Mellor: We understand the pressure on the prison service and pay tribute to its work. That is why we have recruited more than 1,000 additional prison officers during the lifetime of this Parliament and made financial provision for a further 900. The problems cannot be reversed overnight. We are working hard on refurbishing old prisons. Many are having the first major refurbishment since they were constructed over a century ago.
An amnesty would be a grave and serious step. It is extremely difficult for the Government to contemplate such a step, though it is easy for the Opposition, who are not responsible for these matters, to do so.

Mr. Wheeler: Does my hon. Friend agree that the problem is that for many decades there was no prison building in England and Wales and no refurbishment of our old prisons? Would not the Labour-controlled London borough in the Woolwich area greatly assist us if it cleared the decks and allowed the Home Office to get on with building a much-needed prison there?

Mr. Mellor: My hon. Friend makes an important point. The delays in prison construction are obviously to be regretted. I fully endorse what my hon. Friend said. The neglect of over a century of some of our older prisons cannot be reversed overnight, but the Government are making a more serious attempt to do that than did any of our predecessors.

Dr. Summerskill: Will the hon. Gentleman bear in mind that not only are there 45,000 people in prison today, but that a report published yesterday predicted that there would be as many as 50,000 prisoners by the end of the decade? Why did the Government resist any significant new measure being introduced in the Criminal Justice Act 1982 to reduce the number of prisoners? Exhortations to the judiciary have clearly failed. What action will the Government take, given that the Criminal Justice Act does not offer any solution to the problem?

Mr. Mellor: The problem is a little more complex than the hon. Lady has suggested. Since the initiative with the judiciary, the average length of prison sentences has fallen by two months. If a stable number of cases had been coming before the courts the prison population would have been reduced, by reason of that alone, by 2,000 to 3,000. However, as the hon. Lady knows, the number of cases going through the criminal courts increased by 12 per cent. last year and has been increasing over the years. The problem is the increase in crime, leading to more prisoners coming before the courts, and that problem is not as readily soluble as the hon. Lady might imply.

Prisoners (Outside Visits)

Mr. Nicholas Winterton: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will set up an inquiry into the handling of prisoners, who have been committed to prison for acts of serious violence against the person, when they undertake visits outside prison for compassionate purposes.

Mr. Mellor: No, Sir.

Mr. Winterton: I am sure that my hon. Friend will expect me to be flabbergasted at that totally inadequate response. Is he aware that the public are appalled that psychopaths and those who have been convicted of violent offences against the person can be taken to see their parents or other people on compassionate grounds, and allowed into a house without adequate provision being taken to prevent them from escaping, the prison officers remaining at the front door and no guards being placed at the windows? Will my hon. Friend and the Home Secretary give the matter more serious consideration? The people of this country expect to be guarded against psychopaths and violent persons.

Mr. Mellor: My hon. Friend has stated his position with his customary restraint. The number of occasions on which category A criminals are released for compassionate visits are few and far between. All prisoners on such visits are subject to the closest security. It is most unfortunate that the events involving Mr. Thynne should have occurred. I assure my hon. Friend that the matter is being fully investigated. The investigation has not been completed and it would be irresponsible of me to comment until it has been completed.

Mr. Waller: Has my hon. Friend noticed the reference in the recent report of the chief inspector of Her Majesty's prisons to the fact that, far from being allowed out of prison, many prisoners are not even allowed outside their cells and have to spend their time in enforced idleness because of a shortage of work in prison workshops? Is that not an unsatisfactory situation and can my hon. Friend hold out any hope that things will improve?

Mr. Mellor: Yes. It is fundamental to the new regime that we are seeking to create in our prisons to make work as widely available as possible. About 12,000 prisoners are offered work every day and we should like, and are making provision for, that number to increase.

Civil Defence

Mr. Neil Thorne: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he has any plans to set up a special unit to promote the case for effective civil defence.

Mr. Mayhew: No, Sir, but we shall continue to encourage recognition of the fact that the provision of an appropriate level of civil defence is a humanitarian duty.

Mr. Thorne: Will my hon. and learned Friend do everything that he can to ensure that the public are adequately informed about civil defence matters and that they will not be penalised on the basis of which side of a county boundary they reside?

Mr. Mayhew: I agree with my hon. Friend that the passing on of vital information about what has happened, what help is available and other such matters following an attack on this country is one of the most important jobs for local authorities. I pay tribute to the majority of local authorities that have gone beyond the bare minimum required by the present inadequate law.

Dr. Summerskill: As the British Medical Association has totally rejected the Minister's estimates of the number of deaths and the extent of disease and injuries in the event of a nuclear attack, is he aware that that casts serious doubt on all the other Home Office estimates and assumptions about survival in the event of a nuclear war and about the protection of the population?

Mr. Mayhew: I reject the hon. Lady's assertion. I do not think that the people of this country wish to judge the merits or demerits of the policy for civil defence according to whether 1 million, 2 million, 3 million, 4 million or 25 million or 30 million people might die in an attack. The country looks for reasonable protection for the millions who will survive in the event of any attack that it is reasonable to foresee.

Mr. Nicholas Baker: Does my hon. and learned Friend agree that it was irresponsible for the Labour Government


to disband 250,000 volunteers in 1968 and that today, as then, emergency planning against any form of disaster is sensible?

Mr. Mayhew: I agree with my hon. Friend. The record of the Labour party across the whole spectrum of defence has done grave damage. It is important to assess the risk of attack on this country, which is low and will remain low as long as we remain members of NATO and maintain our deterrent policy, and to take such measures for civil defence as are sensible and appropriate.

Mr. Cryer: Do not the public have a pretty shrewd idea of the true position when they see that the Home Office is spending millions of pounds on boltholes for bureaucrats? People recognise that the Home Office is using civil defence as a cosmetic to bolster the Government's defence policies and they know that in a nuclear war nobody would survive and that the dying would envy the dead.

Mr. Mayhew: The public have a very shrewd idea of the motives of the hon. Member for Keighley (Mr. Cryer) and his friends who take the same view about civil defence. Their motive, as I told the Nuclear Free Council conference at Manchester last year, is to make the country neutral, to take it out of NATO and to remove any opportunity to defend itself against attack. They need to discredit civil defence to bring consistency to their policy.

Mr. John Browne: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what preparations have been made to protect the population in the event of hostile attack.

Mr. Mayhew: Detailed preparations include crisis advice to the public; an effective warning of air attack; and central and local government plans for essential services. The existing machinery for the co-ordination of contingency planning is satisfactory.

Mr. Browne: Does my hon. and learned Friend agree that it would be appropriate for community Civil Service stores to hold emergency stocks of food and medical supplies, including facilities for water sterilisation?

Mr. Mayhew: It is important that there should exist adequate supplies of materials for emergency use and for use in an emergency and that there should be stockpiles of food, medical supplies, cooking facilities, motor fuel, rodiac instruments and other specialised equipment, which should include provision for the sterilisation of water.

Mr. Christopher Price: Will the Minister of State tell the House a little more about these boltholes for bureaucrats? How many bureaucrats will fit into the number of boltholes that the Home Office has built already? Will there be any for us? Shall we have any boltholes?

Mr. Mayhew: I hope that the hon. Member for Lewisham, West (Mr. Price) will survive any catastrophe that might overtake the country. There are proposals for the regional government of the country in the event of an attack that made central government no longer possible. I think that the country would hope and expect that to be the case. The idea that the bureaucracy, and even Ministers, will be protected uniformly in such circumstances is nonsense.

Mr. Peter Bottomley: Does my hon. and learned Friend agree that for the House to get people to wear seat

belts to face an unlikely eventuality and then to say that we ought not to have any defence against an attack or make preparations to protect the population from civil or military disaster is highly inconsistent? Will my hon. and learned Friend refresh the memory of the House about the warnings before the last war of the need for the greater protection of civilians, which were ignored until almost the last moment?

Mr. Mayhew: I keep always before my mind, and try to remind people when I am given an opportunity to speak about these matters, that the protection of a civil defence nature that the country was given before the last war served a very useful purpose. I do not know of anyone who said that he did not want an Anderson shelter because it would not keep out a direct hit. These are very important matters, and we should not forget the lessons that the 1930s taught us when a great many people were persuaded to join the Peace Pledge Union. That was misinterpreted and, I think, added materially to the danger that we faced.

Mr. Eastham: Does riot the Minister of State realise that people in such places as Manchester reject completely the conclusions of the Home Office when they read recommendations that they should stock up with string, light bulbs, food, water, the dog and everything else under the table and expect to defend themselves against nuclear weapons? Is it surprising that they reject what the Government are saying?

Mr. Mayhew: I wonder whether there is any matter of policy upon which the hon. Member for Manchester, Blackley (Mr. Eastham) can confidently speak for everyone who lives in Manchester. No Government, knowing that quite simple precautions could protect millions of people, for example, from the effects of fallout coming from a war fought in Europe—with the wind blowing in the wrong direction the fall-out might even reach Manchester—could fail to point that out and urge precautions.

Shoplifting

Mr. Greville Janner: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many women over 60 years of age have been convicted of shoplifting in the last five years for which records are available.

Mr. Mayhew: In the five years from 1977 to 1981, 11,981 women aged 60 or over were found guilty of shoplifting in England and Wales.

Mr. Janner: Can the Minister say how many of these pensioners were ill when they were charged, how many of them committed suicide afterwards, and whether he really thinks that this is the right way to deal with this sort of offence? At the same time, will the hon. and learned Gentleman please warn Easter shoppers not merely of the evils of shoplifting but of the grave dangers of being wrongly charged with shoplifting if they are at all careless in any self-service store?

Mr. Mayhew: I am afraid that I cannot provide the information asked for by the hon. and learned Gentleman in the first part of his supplementary question. I acknowledge that the offence of shoplifting depends upon the proof of dishonest intent, and I understand the importance of a court knowing of any medical condition that may be relevant at the time. My right hon. and learned


Friend the Attorney-General has issued guidelines to prosecuting authorities, and among those is included the recommendation that the age and mental or physical health of the offender is to be taken into account.

Sir Anthony Meyer: Will my hon. and learned Friend ensure that these guidelines are brought to the attention of store operators, in view of the distress that can be caused to elderly people by a mere court appearance when very often there was no felonious intent?

Mr. Mayhew: If there is no criminal intent, the offence of stealing is not made out. But I take the point that my hon. Friend makes and I shall consider in what way it can be taken forward.

Immigrants (Repatriation)

Mr. Proctor: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will conduct a review of Her Majesty's Government's repatriation schemes; and if he will make a statement.

The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. David Waddington): As I told my hon. Friend in answer to his question on 18 March, we are already reviewing the administrative criteria governing the operation of the repatriation scheme under section 29 of the Immigration Act 1971.

Mr. Proctor: I thank my hon. and learned Friend for that reply. Is he aware that there are a number of immigrants who genuinely wish to return to their own countries and who have applied to International Social Service of Great Britain only to find that attempts are made to talk them out of going back and to provide all manner of benefits to help them stay here? What is more, questions are asked about whether there is anywhere for them to go when they return to their own countries. Could matters of this kind be taken into account in the administrative review that my hon. and learned Friend is conducting?

Mr. Waddington: I must tell my hon. Friend that no complaints about poor or unhelpful advice by ISS have been brought to my attention. If any are, I promise to investigate them.

Mr. Dubs: Is the Minister aware that this talk of repatriation is regarded by the black and Asian communities here as a threat to their very lives and existence? Why does not the hon. and learned Gentleman condemn out of hand the tenor of questions such as the one asked by the hon. Member for Basildon (Mr. Proctor)?

Mr. Waddington: The vast majority of members of ethnic minority communities settled here wish to stay and have no interest in repatriation. I agree that it helps no one to pretend otherwise.

Mr. Pitt: In view of the well-publicised distortion of Metropolitan police crime figures by the hon. Member for Basildon (Mr. Proctor), will the Minster consider the inclusion of racist attacks on people and property in the next figures to redress the balance?

Mr. Waddington: That is an entirely different question.

Mr. Richard Shepherd: Does the review referred to by my hon. and learned Friend cover the repatriation of

those such as the Romanian citizen, which was the subject of such controversy in recent weeks? Does it not argue for a more open system of review of such cases?

Mr. Waddington: There is another question about the Romanian citizen to whom my hon. Friend referred. The repatriation scheme applies to Commonwealth citizens.

Election Deposits

Sir Nigel Fisher: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what representations he has received about the present level of deposit required for parliamentary candidates.

Mr. Whitelaw: In the past six months I have received representations in favour of increasing the level of the deposit from four hon. Gentlemen; from a Conservative party constituency association and from one member of the public. I have received representations against increasing the deposit from two hon. Members, from the general secretary of Plaid Cymru and from three members of the public who have previously stood as independent candidates.

Sir Nigel Fisher: Will my right hon. Friend bear in mind that the £150 deposit was introduced as long ago as 1918 to discourage frivolous candidatures and that after Bermondsey, with 16 candidates, and Darlington, with eight, clearly it is no longer any sort of deterrent? Will my right hon. Friend consider raising the deposit to, say, £2,000, which today is roughly the equivalent of what £150 was in 1918?

Mr. Whitelaw: As my hon. Friend knows, the Select Committee on Home Affairs, as part of its inquiry this Session into the Representation of the People Acts, is considering the question of the deposit. We should wait to see what it says. Many people think that the deposit is unsatisfactory at its present level but that changes should, as they have in the past, be made on the basis of all-party agreement in the House. I think that that is important.

Mr. Greville Janner: Does the Home Secretary accept that the present level of deposit creates a travesty of democracy when people stand without any deterrent, using completely free mailing to all constituents, sometimes for their own personal publicity purposes and sometimes to promote the wishes of thoroughly racist and unpleasant little organisations?

Mr. Whitelaw: Without confirming everything that the hon. and learned Gentleman says, I think that many hon. Members believe that the deposit at its present level encourages undesirable candidates. If that is the view of the Select Committee and of the House, and if there is all-party agreement, I should strongly favour putting it up.

Sir Anthony Grant: Whatever is done, will my right hon. Friend ensure that the public are not entirely deprived of the pleasure of amiable nut cases enlivening what is otherwise a somewhat drab event and which is, after all, in accordance with the splendid traditions of British eccentricity?

Mr. Whitelaw: I do not think that there is much danger of stopping that.

Mr. McNally: Considering the tenor of the Home Secretary's earlier remarks, does he agree that to try to introduce any legislation on the matter so late in this


Parliament would be misconstrued and should instead be left to an early decision for the next Parliament, because then it would have no political overtones?

Mr. Whitelaw: I do not think that a decision that consistently has been taken with all-party agreement would be subject to misunderstanding. We should wait to see what the Select Committee says in its report.

Political Refugees

Sir John Biggs-Davison: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make a statement on the present policy of Her Majesty's Government towards applications to reside and work in the United Kingdom by those who have left their native countries for political reasons.

Mr. Waddington: To admit for asylum here those qualifying under the provisions of the 1951 refugee convention; to consider carefully applications in other cases for exceptional treatment outside the immigration rules, but not to regard an individual's dissatisfaction with political or economic conditions in his own country as by itself justifying admission to the United Kingdom.

Sir John Biggs-Davison: Partly because of the admittedly very different Romanian case, is there not new apprehension, particularly in the Polish community, that those who have political asylum might be required to return home while persecution and oppression still exist there? Will my hon. and learned Friend reassure those concerned?

Mr. Waddington: Of course no Pole who has been granted political asylum could possibly be returned home. My hon. Friend clearly is referring to those many other Poles who, since the introduction of martial law, have been given exceptional leave to remain in Britain.
I hope that the Polish community recognises that the Government have shown generosity. They should take comfort from that generosity. Only recently we announced that those who were here at the time of martial law and those who came here before my right hon. Friend's statement on 9 March will be able to apply for leave to stay another 12 months. If the situation in Poland has not improved at the end of that 12 months we shall again consider their cases most sympathetically.

Mr. Grimond: Is the Minister aware that, in spite of what the Home Office has said, there is still widespread concern and even disgust about the treatment of this wretched Romanian? Will the Government review their policy? Political refugees have been of great service to this country and there would be comparatively few even if they were all let in. Is the Minister aware that there is considerable anxiety that if they are not let in these wretched working men who come to this country will be sent back to Romania to face their fate?

Mr. Waddington: I appreciate the right hon. Gentleman's concern. I know that that concern has been shared by many people. We try our best to apply sympathetically and fairly the criteria laid down in the United Nations convention for the treatment of refugees. There would be grave risks if we ignored those criteria in a commendable wish to help others. The whole process of political asylum could be devalued.
We simply cannot proceed on the assumption that anybody who comes to this country from eastern Europe

has the right to asylum here just because if he returned to his own country he might suffer penalties. If we followed that policy we would give a contingent right of asylum to every citizen from every country behind the iron curtain.

Oral Answers to Questions — PRIME MINISTER

Low Pay

Mr Beith: asked the Prime Minister if she will give further consideration to the problem of low pay.

The Prime Minister (Mrs. Margaret Thatcher): My right hon. and learned Friend's Budget will benefit the low paid by taking 1¼ million people out of tax altogether. Since we took office we have raised the tax thresholds by over 5 per cent. in real terms. By last November the real level of family income supplement was 14 per cent. higher, for a family with two children, than it was when we took office. Next November child benefit will be increased to £6·50 a week, and should then reach its highest-ever level in real terms.

Mr. Beith: Has the Prime Minister studied the recent report from the Low Pay Unit on farm wages—a sector with many families on family income supplement? Does the right hon. Lady realise from this that high output, high efficiency and high productivity do not automatically bring about adequate wage in an industry, as she so often claims will happen over industry generally? Will the Prime Minister therefore charge her Ministers to make an urgent investigation into how something can be done about wages in agriculture? Will she revise her views about how the low-pay problem will be tackled over the economy generally?

The Prime Minister: As the hon. Gentleman will know, although farm incomes themselves rose substantially last year—[Hon. MEMBERS: "Farmers."] I refer to the income of farmers. [Interruption.] Indeed, I am just about to make the point that although farm workers' incomes have gone up very considerably, the incomes of farmers have fallen very substantially, until this last year. That factor must be taken into account.

Mr. Beaumont-Dark: Will my right hon. Friend today comment on the appalling dispute about such trivia in the motor industry—

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman has overlooked the fact that this is not an open question.

Mr. Clinton Davis: When dealing with low pay and the whole question of her monetarist approach, has the right hon. Lady taken time to consider the devastating indictment of her policies by her right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Sir. I. Gilmour) in his latest book? Has she considered his conclusion that Dr. Pangloss is now in charge of our affairs, although the results make it appear that Dr. Strangelove is in charge?

The Prime Minister: What a studied and rather irrelevant question. The monetarist approach has got inflation down. As many right hon. and hon. Gentlemen said in the lifetime of the last Government, inflation is the worst enemy of jobs. Monetarism gets inflation down. Nothing better protects small savings than getting inflation down. The last Government plundered the savings of many people by their record level of inflation.

Macclesfield

Mr. Nicholas Winterton: asked the Prime Minister if she has any plans to visit Macclesfield.

The Prime Minister: I have at present no plans to do so.

Mr. Winterton: Distressed though I am that the Prime Minister will not be able to visit my constituency, may I ask her whether she is aware that, had she had time to do so, she would have realised that the vast majority of my constituents, particularly the war widows whose husbands served this country so well and guaranteed the freedom and democracy that we cherish today, are as appalled as many Members of this House at the antics of those blinkered and dangerous, even if sincere, women who are today invading the peaceful villages of Berkshire? Would they not do better to visit Berlin and link arms along the wall that seeks to keep people in the Soviet Union rather than the allies out of eastern Europe?

The Prime Minister: With regard to the first part of my hon. Friend's question, he will know that the Government's record on war widows' pensions is excellent. They have been increased four times and we have taken war widows' pensions out of taxation altogether. Many war widows can also draw a separate pension because of their own contributions and many of them, since the last war, have done so, because they went back to work at the time.
With regard to what my hon. Friend said about those who are demonstrating on Greenham Common this Maundy Thursday, I agree with him and my right hon. colleagues who have said that it would make far more sense for those women to link hands around the Berlin wall. If, by doing so, they managed to persuade the Soviets to take it down, to remove the guns, the dogs and the mines that are there to kill those who attempt to escape to freedom, they would be achieving something. If they do not succeed in persuading the Soviets to take it down, they will prove that the freedom of the Greenham Common women and the freedom of all people in this country still needs to be defended.

Engagements

Mr. Greville Janner: asked the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 31 March.

The Prime Minister: This morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in the House I shall be having further meetings later today.

Mr. Janner: When the Prime Minister met her ministerial colleagues today, did she have time to discuss with the Secretary of State for Employment his belated approval of the Commission for Racial Equality's code on ethnic monitoring, and in particular his decision that the implementation of the code will be delayed by one year? Does she not regard that as a disgraceful delay in view of the wicked levels of unemployment among the black and Asian communities in this country?

The Prime Minister: The answer to the hon. and learned Gentleman is no. The code has now been published. As the hon. and learned Gentleman will know, it still gives rise to some controversy because there are

quite a number of things that are onerous for small business. He will also be aware that, as the law stands, the House has no right to amend that code, which does give rise to some difficulty. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment proposes to introduce legislation so that in future we can not only consider a code but amend it.

Mr. Roy Jenkins: Has the Prime Minister had an opportunity to study President Reagan's latest aims control statement? Does she consider that this would be compatible with an agreement, on balance, along the lines discussed by Mr. Nitze and his Soviet opposite number in their much publicised walk a few months ago?

The Prime Minister: We have welcomed President Reagan's proposal. It is that, as an interim agreement, there should be equal numbers of intermediate range missiles and that that intermediate number should be negotiated at the Geneva table, between Mr. Nitze and his opposite number. That is the right way to go about it and this is a welcome statement.

Mr. Beaumont-Dark: Does my right hon. Friend agree that over the past two years the British motor industry has built up a splendid name for good products and good productivity? Does she further agree that it is particularly depressinging that, because of a minor dispute, its credibility is now to be thrown into question? Will she appeal to both sides at BL Cowley and Ford Halewood not to destroy what has been so hard to build up and remind them that their jobs and those of other workers are placed in great jeopardy at times such as this?

The Prime Minister: I agree with my hon. Friend. All taxpayers in this country have poured money into British Layland to enable it to produce good products such as the Metro and the Maestro. Just at the moment when they are selling well, some of the workers of British Leyand go on strike. That is a tragedy for them, their products, their company and for their country. I hope that they will go back to work and keep their jobs.

Mr. Foot: I wish to ask the Prime Minister two questions on her apparently quite unqualified acceptance of President Reagan's interpretation of the zero option proposal. First, why does she think that it is right to exclude sea-based missiles but to include land-based or air-based missiles in the negotiations? Does she not agree that to include both would be a better way of proceeding with the negotiations? Secondly, will she take into account that one of the reasons why so many British people, including the women at Greenham Common, who are opposing it for that reason among others, are so bitterly opposed to the deployment of cruise missiles is that such deployment would make well-nigh impossible any future arms control agreement? What does the right hon. Lady have to say on that subject?

The Prime Minister: This round is about land-based intermediate range nuclear missiles. There are arrangements for different classes of missiles to be dealt with separately. These are land-based—the SS20, cruise and Pershing. They are all land-based. It is right that they should be dealt with separately—

Mr. Cryer: Why?

The Prime Minister: Because there are other arrangements at Geneva for dealing with sea-based


missiles. I think it best that this is negotiated at Geneva. It is right that we try to deal with land-based intermediate range missiles. Zero is absolutely the best possible answer. Let us never forget that. The reason why it cannot be obtained is the Soviet Union. In the absence of being able to remove SS20s altogether, it is right that we should seek to deploy a smaller number. Provided the Soviet Union reduces the number of SS20s, fewer cruise and Pershings would need to be deployed. That is a reasonable arrangement. I hope that the negotiations at Geneva will succeed.

Mr. Foot: Will the right hon. Lady answer my second question? Does she agree that the deployment of cruise missiles—[Interruption.] It is all very well for right hon. and hon. Gentlemen on the Conservative Benches to interrupt, but that was the NATO view in June 1979. NATO took the view then that the deployment of cruise missiles would make future arms control arrangements impossible. With regard to my first question, is the right hon. Lady saying that the possibility of including sea-based and other missiles is to be excluded from the Geneva negotiations? That is tantamount to saying that it is pretty well impossible to reach an agreement.

The Prime Minister: First, the right hon. Gentleman is aware that the Government of whom he was a member agreed to the modernisation of intermediate nuclear weapons. At that time weapons such as cruise and Pershing were discussed. They were in favour of modernisation. The decision in NATO was taken in December 1979 and was taken on the basis that there must

be balance and verification. The zero option was a special case of that balance. I did not hear the right hon. Gentleman complain about the actual deployment of SS20s. The SS20s are actually deployed. The Soviet tactic is to try to keep that deployment while we do not modernise our nuclear weapons. The only way to get the Soviets to the negotiating table is to say that if they will not take them down we shall deploy ours, but only as many as we need to—which depends on how many of theirs they take down.

Mr. Foot: We shall debate these matters in the House soon and the right hon. Lady's answers make it all the more necessary that we should. First, it is absolutely untrue that the Opposition did not protest about the SS20s. We did protest and we did it in Moscow as well. We also understood, as anyone who tries to understand these matters must, that sea-based theatre weapons should be included in the discussions. It is most noticeable that the right hon. Lady did not even attempt to answer my question about how cruise missiles would make future arms control impossible. That was NATO's view in June 1979 and I dare say that it is still true.

The Prime Minister: There are separate negotiations for strategic missiles. As the right hon. Gentleman should know, the President of the United States made proposals for substantial reductions in strategic missiles. The Russians have not come very far in agreeing to that at Geneva, either. Those proposals remain on the table. If the right hon. Gentleman is against deployment of the SS20s, why does he not protest and ask for them to be taken down?

Business of the House

Mr. Michael Foot: Will the Leader of the House state the business for the week after the Easter recess?

The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. John Biffen): Yes, Sir. The business for the week after the Easter recess will be as follows:
MONDAY 11 APRIL—Second Reading of the Data Protection Bill [Lords].
Remaining stages of the Ports (Reduction of Debt) Bill.
Second Reading of the Matrimonial Homes Bill [Lords], of the Mental Health Bill [Lords] and of the Pilotage Bill [Lords], which are consolidation measures.
TUESDAY 12 APRIL—Remaining stages of the Miscellaneous Financial Provisions Bill and of the Plant Varieties Bill [Lords].
Motion on the House of Commons Disqualification Act 1975.
WEDNESDAY 13 APRIL—Second Reading of the Social Security and Housing Benefits Bill.
Motion on the code of practice on closed shops agreements and arrangements.
THURSDAY 14 APRIL—Second Reading of the Finance Bill.
Motions relating to the National Health Service (Dental and Optical Charges and Remission Charges) Amendment Regulations.
FRIDAY 15 APRIL—Private Members' motions.

Mr. Foot: I wish to put a number of questions to the right hon. Gentleman. The first arises from some exchanges that took place in the House yesterday, and statements that have been made since. Will the right hon. Gentleman give us an assurance that before the Government force the British Gas Corporation to sell its shares in the Wytch Farm oilfield at a substantial price the Secretary of State for Energy will make a statement to the House that we can debate? After the exchanges yesterday, is that not an obligation on the Government?
Will there be a statement in the near future on the shipbuilding industry, where such serious and tragic developments are taking place?
Can the right hon. Gentleman now tell us when we can expect a statement from the Home Secretary about the amendments that he intends to introduce to the Police and Criminal Evidence Bill? Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that there can be no question of the Bill proceeding along its present lines because of the representations that have been made by so many organisations? I am sure that no Bill has been introduced in this House, even by this Government, that has aroused such widespread criticism from so many different bodies. Are not the House and the country entitled to a statement from the Government before the Bill proceeds any further?
We have asked many times for a statement on the future of Ravenscraig. When will the House be given a statement on the Government's plans for that plant?
I have already asked when we can debate the second Brandt report. Can the right hon. Gentleman confirm that it will be debated soon?
In view of what the Prime Minister has said today about the extremely difficult and dangerous negotiations taking

place in Geneva, the Opposition want an extensive debate as soon as possible on those disarmament discussions and the defence situation. Can that take place soon after the House returns from the Easter recess?

Mr. Biffen: I shall draw the attention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy to the anxieties that have been expressed about the sale of Wytch Farm. I at once acknowledge that it is a matter of great interest to the House. I shall draw the attention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Industry to the interests shown in the fortunes of the shipbuilding industry. Indeed, that subject will be debated later today.
I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary will table as soon as possible the appropriate amendments to the Police and Criminal Evidence Bill. Doubtless the House will have noted the very compelling way in which my right hon. Friend has conducted his discussions with the bishops. There will be plenty of opportunity to consider the more refined thoughts as a result of those exchanges by the time that the Bill is further considered on the Floor of the House.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Industry has received no formal proposals about any development at Ravenscraig. However, I shall draw his attention to the right hon. Gentleman's point. I emphasise what I have said previously: it is my right hon. Friend's intention to make a statement to the House on the corporate plan of the British Steel Corporation as soon as he is in a position so to do.
I gladly recommit myself to the proposition that the second Brandt report should be discussed at some future date. I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman will appreciate that the House recently had the opportunity of a three-hour debate on that matter. Although I accept at once that that does not invalidate the prospect of a future debate, I must tell him that it will not be in the immediate future.
The right hon. Gentleman's final and perhaps most important request was that we should soon debate disarmament and the discussions currently taking place. I, too, am anxious that we should have such a debate, and I shall use my energies to ensure that it takes place as soon as possible.

Mr. Foot: I thank the right hon. Gentleman for some of his replies. I was interested in his account of the compelling discussions between the Home Secretary and the bishops on the Police and Criminal Evidence Bill. What was the nature of the discussions, what did the Home Secretary say and what were the episcopal retorts?

Mr. Biffen: Like the right hon. Gentleman, I have only the advantage of media reports. I assume that any discussions with bishops must, by their very nature, be compelling.

Dr. David Owen: Will the right hon. Gentleman assure the House that any debate on nuclear disarmament will take the form of an amendable motion and that he will not listen to the blandishments of the official Opposition to debate it on the Adjournment of the House so that the Opposition's hypocrisy on the whole issue of the commitment to unilateral disarmament—while lecturing the House on the negotiating stance at the disarmament talks—might be fully explored?

Mr. Biffen: I shall bear that point in mind.

Mr. Michael Neubert: Has my right hon. Friend noted the failure of any puffs of white smoke to emerge from the offices of the Liberal-SDP alliance yesterday afternoon? Will he find time, when we return from the Easter recess, for a debate on the dilemma in which the Alliance finds itself, with two leaders, neither of whom will be Prime Minister?

Mr. Biffen: Experts in these matters might feel that, in view of the signal success of the late Pope John, the alliance might choose an old man in a hurry.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I remind the House that the business today is devoted to Private Members' debates. I propose that, with the good will of the House, we should finish business questions by 10.45 am.

Mr. Edward Rowlands: I reinforce the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Foot) about the urgent need for a statement on Wytch Farm, especially after yesterday's special meeting between the Secretary of State for Energy and the British Gas Corporation. Is the Leader of the House aware that on Monday the Secretary of State misled the House by saying that he was aware of only one report on the valuation of Wytch Farm, although he told me in answer to a question some months ago that he had access to an independent consultants' report? Does not the Secretary of State have a double reason for making a statement to the House on that matter?

Mr. Biffen: I take note of what the hon. Gentleman says and I shall make certain that his anxieties are referred to my right hon. Friend.

Mr. Nicholas Winterton: My right hon. Friend will be aware that the latest CBI report has shown that there is an upturn in the prospects for industry. Will he try to arrange a general debate on industry and trade shortly after we return from the Easter recess so that all matters relating to trade and unfair trading practices can be debated to ensure that the growth in British industry and trade can continue unimpeded without unfair competition?

Mr. Biffen: Such are the skills of my hon. Friend that I am quite certain that he will be able to say on the Second Reading of the Finance Bill all that he intends to say.

Mr. John Roper: In view of the nature of the Data Protection Bill, will the Leader of the House consider the possibility of using the Special Standing Committee procedure before the Bill goes to a normal Standing Committee?

Mr. Biffen: I have written to the hon. Gentleman on this matter, as he had corresponded with me making that request. I said that, in view of the extent of consultations that have already taken place on these topics and the wide discussions that took place in the other place, I do not believe that that procedure would be appropriate for the Bill.

Mr. Tom Clarke: Does the Leader of the House recall the request of his right hon. Friend the Member for Taunton (Mr du Cann) that we should have a debate on Civil Service matters? Now that the Treasury is dealing with matters previously dealt with by the Civil Service Department—if anything, that has given rise to even more concern—may we have a debate on these matters in the near future?

Mr. Biffen: I can be no more forthcoming this morning than I have been on previous occasions. I take note of the hon. Gentleman's interest that there should be a debate.

Mr. Nicholas Baker: Is my right hon. Friend aware of the widespread concern in the House at the out-of-date nature of the laws and procedure relating to insolvency and that many good businesses and the jobs that go with them are being lost unnecessarily as a result of those out-of-date procedures? Will he provide an early opportunity to debate the nil progress being made by the Department of Trade on this matter?

Mr. Biffen: As an initial step, I should like the opportunity to refer what my hon. Friend has said to my noble Friend the Secretary of State for Trade, because I cannot hold out the prospect of an early debate on the subject.

Mr. Michael English: Will the right hon. Gentleman look into the odd answer given by the Minister of State, Home Office about the poor Romanian shuttlecock? He managed to put in the same answer reference to refugees under the United Nations convention, which was constructed for mass refugees from something like a war, and the phrase "political asylum". Is it not true that the status of persons receiving political asylum is quite different from that of a refugee, and is kept separately in Home Office statistics? Is it possible that the confusion in the junior Minister's mind has actually caused this dreadful incident?

Mr. Biffen: My hon. and learned Friend the Minister of State is an evident example of clear and decisive thinking, so I reject at once the charge of confusion. The hon. Member for Nottingham, West (Mr. English) may be able to take part in the debate on the Romanian refugee later this morning, but in any case I shall refer what he says to my hon. and learned Friend, who may correspond with him to clear up any matters that may have given rise to misunderstanding.

Mr. Harry Greenway: Will my right hon. Friend arrange an early statement by the appropriate Minister about the Football League's decision to grant exclusive rights for the protection of football matches next season to video companies for a fee of £8 million, thereby removing soccer matches from the screens of BBC and ITV and perhaps from the homes and enjoyment of millions of people in this country?

Mr. Biffen: We have the expert in this House, in the sense that the hon. Member for Nottingham, East (Mr. Dunnett) is proving to be a very robust negotiator in these matters. I am not sure about the ministerial responsibility for this subject, but I shall refer my hon. Friend's anxiety to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment.

Mr. Alfred Dubs: As the prison population has now reached 45,000, and in the light of yesterday's report by Her Majesty's chief inspector of prisons, may we have an early debate on the crisis in our prisons?

Mr. Biffen: I cannot offer the prospect of an early debate, although Home Office legislation is passing through the House, the Committee stage of which will take place fairly soon, when I am sure that many of the points that the hon. Gentleman wants to raise could be made.

Mr. K. Harvey Proctor: Reverting to the important and damaging document, the draft code of practice for the elimination of racial discrimination and the promotion of equality of opportunity in employment, has my right hon. Friend seen the analogy casting our right hon. Friend the Secretry of State for Employment in the guise of a head waiter dishing up rather unpalatable fare that he himself had not made? Will my right hon. Friend give an assurance that the House will debate the matter at an early opportunity, in view of the cost impact for British industry?

Mr. Biffen: I cannot say when the matter will be debated. I can only give the somewhat negative response that it does not appear on the programme that I have announced for the week after the recess. I know that all right hon. and hon. Members will recognise the importance of the subject, even if they do not share my hon. Friend's view.

Mr. Greville Janner: Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that many Opposition Members would welcome a debate on the subject just raised by the hon. Member for Basildon (Mr. Proctor), if only to renounce and denounce the views that he has just expressed, for which he is notorious? I revert to the question that was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea, South (Mr. Dubs). Is he aware of the statement made by the governor of Leicester prison about the grim overcrowding and the terrible effect that it is having not merely on the people inside the prison but on those who work there? If we cannot have a debate, will the Home Secretary make a statement on this important subject?

Mr. Biffen: In answer to the hon. and learned Gentleman's first point, as he will have heard from my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, it is the Government's intention to secure legislation so that orders on racial equality can be amended. I should add that in the debate that will follow there will be a strong disposition to argue for such powers of amendment and to reject a great deal of the received wisdom of the race relations industry.
I shall refer to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary what the hon. and learned Gentleman has said about the desirability of a statement being made on the problems in prisons.

PETITION

Teacher Training Courses (De La Salle College, Middleton)

Mr. Jim Callaghan: I thank you, Mr. Speaker, for allowing me to present to the House this humble petition signed by the citizens of the north-west region of England.
The petition has been organised by his Grace Bishop Holland of the diocese of Salford, and this day contains 100,000 signatures and sheweth that the signatories
wholly oppose the decision of the Department of State for Education and Science to terminate initial teacher training courses at De La Salle College, Middleton, Manchester.
Wherefore your Petitioners pray that your honourable House will do all in its power to persuade the Secretary of State for Education and Science to reverse the decision to terminate initial teacher training courses at De La Salle College, Manchester.
And your petitioners, as in duty bound, will every pray for a reversal of the Minister's decision.

To lie upon the Table.

Mr. Speaker: Order. Before I call the first debate on the Adjournment, may I say that we shall allow half an hour for the first debate, and we shall take the few minutes that are necessary to make it the half hour from the second debate. I hope that the hon. Gentlemen concerned are agreeable to that.

Northern Ireland Citizens (Supplementary Benefit)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Lang.]

Rev. Martin Smyth: I am glad of the opportunity to bring to the attention of the House before it adjourns the subject of supplementary benefit entitlement of Northern Ireland citizens during absences in Great Britain. The more I have examined the problem, the more I have realised how widespread it is and that it can and must be resolved. Therefore, I look for a positive response from the Government to the debate. Delay causes distress to some of the most needy sections of our community.
I said that the problem was widespread. It affects not only those who are resident in Northern Ireland but other United Kingdom citizens who may have to visit Northern Ireland from time to time. The subject is therefore of importance to all right hon. and hon. Members, who, I am sure, have already been approached by irate constituents who are disappointed to discover their rights to social security being denied in another part of the United Kingdom.
For example, as recently as Tuesday of this week I was contacted by a young mother who was visiting Belfast. Incidentally, she is an adopted candidate for the forthcoming local government elections in an English town. I hasten to assure the hon. Member for Hammersmith, North (Mr. Soley) that there is no question of Ulster Unionists contesting English constituencies, although they may have to do so to give an opportunity to Unionist-tninking people to support true Unionism.
That young woman went to the local post office in the town where she was visiting her friends to draw her child benefit, thinking that that was her entitlement. However, it was denied to her because her book was marked "GB". I recognise the technical difficulties, but most citizens see "GB" as an abbreviation for "United Kingdom". Believing in the unity of that kingdom as well as the equality of its citizens, that young woman could not understand why her basic right to benefit was denied to her while she was in Northern Ireland. On visiting the post office to find out at first hand what was going on, I discovered how widespread the problem is. For example, some books are stamped "NI". I saw one the other day that was stamped "NI", "GB" and "IOM". Therefore, there is a wide range of books for the payment of social security benefits within the United Kingdom.
I think that I understand the historic reason for that distinction. However, for social security benefits, for which I believe there is parity throughout the United Kingdom, I maintain that such a distinction has not been applicable for at least the past 10 years. Northern Ireland has been legislated for by this Parliament, albeit

sometimes in a more fanciful way than for other parts of the United Kingdom. Furthermore, if I understand Government and Opposition thinking correctly, it does not appear that in the foreseeable future Northern Ireland will have an unrigged democratic legislature arid the responsibility will continue to rest with the House.
Even with proper devolved government, I contend that every citizen in the nation should be entitled not only to parity of benefit but to the payment of such benefit in any part of the kingdom. If ii is possible to have reciprocity between nations, it should be possible within this nation.
When we look at what happens within the nation, we discover that Scottish people visiting England are entitled to the payment of benefit. Northern Ireland is nearer to England than are many parts of Scotland. Therefore, Ulster people should be entitled to the payment of such benefits, if need be with proper notice, and, vice versa, those visiting from Great Britain should receive payments in Northern Ireland.
Today I speak particularly of supplementary benefit. I warmly welcome the recent circular from the Social Security Advisory Committee, dated 24 March. The committee states that it is examining different benefits and relationships with Northern Ireland. It is important that supplementary benefit regulations are reviewed regularly. While the regulations in the first instance would apply only to Great Britain, it is clear that the Department of Health and Social Security would make corresponding regulations for Northern Ireland.
I not merely stress parity of benefit but ask that before the House adjourns citizens should be assured that that grievance will be remedied. Supplementary benefit is normally paid to those who have no other means of financial support. When, for whatever reason, they travel to Great Britain, not only are they denied that benefit in Northern Ireland, but regulation 3 of the Supplementary Benefit (Conditions of Entitlement) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 1981—I stress the year 1981, because that comes within the ambit of the House—states that benefit is payable only to a recipient in Northern Ireland. Undeniably, that has hit many people. From time to time I have drawn the Minister's attention to the embarrassment and distress caused to some of my constituents. For example, a young person seeking to further his educational prospects finds that if he travels to seek openings he loses his supplementary benefit.
One person could have had his supplementary benefit paid to him if the regular commissioning board that he was required to attend had met in Northern Ireland, but it met in England and he was thus denied benefit. Another young person, obliged to travel with an invalid widowed mother to England, was not only faced with the additional expense, but was denied his benefit. He was penalised for doing his duty to his mother by visiting another part of his own country.
It appears that the Government recognise that the Great Britain and Northern Ireland supplementary benefit schemes are separate and not reciprocal. Anyone who crosses the Irish sea or the North channel to attend an interview for employment or for an educational opportunity loses his or her entitlement to benefit while away from home. That happens although there is supposed to be parity in social benefits in the United Kingdom and although the Prime Minister has urged our citizens to be more mobile in seeking employment.
I understand that the lack of regulatory powers allowing continuing entitlement to supplementary benefit during temporary absences from Northern Ireland to Great Britain and vice versa have been causing concern in some Government circles. However, it is my conviction that concern is not enough. I hope that the Government will announce that some steps are being taken to correct that gross inequity. It has never been the practice, especially of those in the Christian tradition, to ignore the needy in an effort to save public expenditure. I do not believe that that is the intention, let alone the desire, of the Government. Nevertheless, the longer the practice continues the longer some of the most needy citizens of our country will be victimised and deprived of their recognised rights. Even in this credit card era, there is no substitute for cash on the spot.

11 am

The Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Mr. John Patten): I have listened with great interest to the points made by the hon. Member for Belfast, South (Rev. Martin Smyth). The difficulties that he has pointed out, both generally and from his constituency experience, are problems with which we have long been familiar in the DHSS both in Northern Ireland and this side of the water. I am grateful for the concern that the hon. Gentleman and his right hon. Friend the Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell) have shown about this from time to time. I hope that it will not surprise the hon. Gentleman too much and will be a source of unqualified pleasure to him when I say that I have good news for him today, in that I am in a position to give precisely the positive Government response that he seeks.
I remind the House that under the existing regulations pensioners and other claimants not required to be available for work as a condition for receiving supplementary benefit already retain their entitlement to supplementary benefit during short absences from their homes. That has been the position for some time. The difficulties referred to by the hon. Gentleman have always arisen, I believe, when the claimant was required to be available for work as a condition for receiving benefit and was thus not covered by the existing regulations on this side of the water or the existing statutory rules on the other side of the water.
The hon. Gentleman will not need to be reminded that the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security, my hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Mr. Newton), announced in a written answer on 22 March that the Government intended to lay amending regulations before the House before the end of this Session. Among other things, the regulations will provide that all claimants in Great Britain in receipt of supplementary benefit, including the unemployed and the sick, will remain entitled to those benefits when absent from Great Britain for up to four weeks, provided that they continue, as in the past, to satisfy all the relevant conditions.
I am pleased to tell the House that those regulations will be referred to the Social Security Advisory Committee in the very near future. The draft regulations do not deal only with the problem of entitlement during short absences from Great Britain. They also deal with a number of other important issues, including payments that in future will be available for travel expenses, removal expenses and funeral expenses between the two jurisdictions. That is the position with regard to the Great Britain regulations.
Immediately after the amending regulations have been approved by the DHSS on this side of the water and laid before the House, the DHSS in the Province will make corresponding statutory rules for Northern Ireland. The provisions of both the Great Britain regulations and the Northern Ireland statutory rules will come into force together and will be brought to the attention of claimants and DHSS staff in the normal way. In this context, I welcome suggestions from hon. Members as to the most efficient means of drawing the attention of recipients to the new provisions.
I do not think for a moment that the numbers involved are likely to be large, but it is clear that the amended provisions should ensure that no claimant who is temporarily absent from his or her home on whichever side of the water loses supplementary benefit as a result of an absence of up to four weeks. In a practical sense, it might be said that we are about to abolish the Irish sea for supplementary benefit purposes, although in a formal sense two separate schemes will continue to exist.
I hope that the hon. Gentleman is satisfied with the clear undertaking that I have given on behalf of the Government in response to his request.

Mr. J. Enoch Powell: One suggestion occurs to me which the Minister might cause to be taken into account—the bringing to the notice of claimants of the four-week limitation. There will be little problem in notifying potential new beneficiaries of their new right because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, South (Rev. Smyth) emphasised, most of them assume that they have that right and are startled and shocked to discover that they have not. It may escape their notice, however, especially when on a visit which may be of some duration to another part of the kingdom, that the new right is limited. It should thus be brought to their attention at the first moment of their availing themselves of the new facility that it lasts for only four weeks, so that they may make arrangements in good time. I hope that the Minister will arrange for that to be considered to see whether there is any substance in it.

Mr. Patten: The right hon. Gentleman makes a valuable suggestion. I shall ensure that careful attention is given to ways of drawing attention to the four-week entitlement for those travelling to other parts of the United Kingdom.
I hope that the new regulations and statutory rules will be enforced in the not too distant future—perhaps in the summer, but certainly by the autumn.

Shipbuilding (Tyne and Wear)

Mr. Don Dixon: I am pleased to be able to speak today on the serious situation of the shipbuilding industry in this country and throughout the world. I am perturbed, however, that the Secretary of State for Industry, in view of the numerous debates on the shipbuilding industry and the introduction of the British Shipbuilding Bill, has not had the courtesy to come and hear about the fears of shipbuilding communities throughout the country. I refer to shipbuilding communities because I was born and have spent all my life in such a community and I worked in shipbuilding until I became a Member of Parliament, so I am well aware of the anxiety felt by those communities.
First, I pay tribute to Tyne and Wear county council and especially to its leader, councillor Michael Campbell, for its current campaign to save the shipyard in its area. That is a credit to the locally elected representatives, who, unlike the Government, are not sitting back and watching the death of one of our oldest and most important basic industries.
I have been accused on previous occasions of being emotive about the shipbuilding industry. I make no apology for that. I started work in the industry when I left school at the age of 14 and I have worked in no other industry. I have vivid childhood memories of my father and grandfather being thrown out of work when the Palmer shipyard was closed by Shipbuilding Security Ltd. in 1934. My grandfather never worked again and my father did not work again until war was declared. In the 1930s, thousands of good men were thrown on to the scrap heap as surplus to requirements, redundant and no longer required to do a useful job for society.
A few years later, when war was declared in 1939, they were all taken back into the yards because of the sudden importance of ships to us as an island nation. Not only were they taken back into the yards but if they did not work overtime they were put in front of a tribunal and fined for not working weekends and evenings. That is the extent of the importance of shipbuilding workers during the war. People who a few years previously had been no use to society were suddenly important.
The same story was told just 12 months ago during the Falklands dispute when men in Tyne and Wear who had been paid off in the previous 12 months to two years and had never had any other employment were fetched back into the shipyards and asked to work around the clock to get the task force ready.
Tyne and Wear is the centre of the British shipbuilding industry. It contains the largest concentration of public and private shipbuilding activity in the country. The importance of the area to the industry was recognised in 1979 when British Shipbuilders chose to have its headquarters in Benton house in Newcastle. Lloyd's Register also has an office in Newcastle. The boilermakers society, one of the biggest unions in the shipbuilding industry, has always had its headquarters in Newcastle. That proves the importance of Tyne and Wear to the shipbuilding industries.
Facilities in Tyne and Wear cover a range of activities, including merchant shipbuilding, warship building, ship repairing and marine and related engineering. There is an integrated shipbuilding, ship repairing and engineering

industry that is almost wholly supplied and serviced within the area. Those conditions are not to be found anywhere else in the country.
Many organisations are connected with the industry. Newcastle university, for example, has the largest and foremost architectural department in the country, which has close connections with that industry. It also has a marine industries centre that was set up in 1970. Sunderland polytechnic has a department of naval architecture and South Shields marine and technical college is internationally known for its training of seafarers. Within those institutions the county has the greatest concentration of technical and educational facilities that are directly connected with the shipbuilding industry.
British Shipbuilders' operations in the county consist of three major shipbuilding companies. The first is Swan Hunter on the Tyne. I am pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for Newton (Mr. Evans) is here because we have both worked in many of the yards that now belong to Swan Hunter. The second is Austin and Pickersgill and the third is Sunderland Shipbuilders, both of which are on the river Wear. There is also Clelands which is a small shipbuilding yard on the river Tyne and Tyne Shiprepair which is one of the major ship repairing companies in the country. There are many engineering companies such as Clarke Hawthorne, British Shipbuilders Engineering and Technical and Wallsend Slipway.
The Tyne and Wear area made a major contribution to the overall production of British Shipbuilders in 1981–82. It accounted for 60 per cent. of employment and turnover in the merchant shipbuilding division, 70 per cent. of employment and turnover in the ship repairing division and 56 per cent. of employment and 59 per cent. of turnover in the engineering division. At the moment, the shipbuilding industry employs nearly 20,000 people in Tyne and Wear out of a total of 95,000 manufacturing jobs. Therefore, the shipbuilding industry represents 20 per cent. of all manufacturing jobs in the county. Any further reduction in the industry will have serious consequences for the local community, where almost 100,000 people are out of work.
The following firms have recently announced redundancies in the county. Tyne Shiprepair of south Tyneside has announced 1,200 job losses, Sunderland Forge has announced 440 job losses, Willam Press of North Shields has announced 330 job losses, H. K. Porter Ltd. of Newburn has announced 86 job losses, Lack—Johnson of Washington has announced 70 job losses, Caterpillar Tractors of Birtley has announced 60 job losses, Crompton Parkinson of South Shields has announced 60 job losses and Ronson of North Shields has announced 50 job losses. I could go on ad nauseam about the number of jobs that the county is losing in manufacturing industries. We should bear in mind the fact that those job losses are adding to the 100,000 people who are already unemployed arid the fact that a threat hangs over the 20,000 people who are directly employed in the shipbuilding industry and the other 80,000 people who are indirectly employed by it as suppliers of materials.
Jarrow, where my hon. Friend the Member for Newton lived for so long, was known in the 1930s as the town that was murdered. We already have one of the highest rates of unemployment in the country. The last ship repairing yard, Mercantile Dry Dock, has closed down. The last shipbuilding yard, Palmer's, is under threat as a result of


the present shipbuilding policy. The last pit in my constituency, Boldon colliery, has been closed. The last steel plant in my constituency is under threat of closure. In the South Tyneside metropolitan district, which comprises the South Shields and Jarrow constituencies, there are pockets of almost 50 per cent. unemployment.
A survey on part of the district conducted by the northeast centre for community studies shows that, in the area studied, 22 per cent. of all heads of household were unemployed. Moreover, 53 per cent. of respondents to the survey rely on help towards rent, rates and mortgage repayments and 28 per cent. have difficulty in paying the rent. The report also found that 37 per cent. of respondents had difficulty in paying heating bills and that 40 per cent. had been unable to pay bills. That is the type of area that we are dealing with when we talk of reducing Britain's shipbuilding capacity. We are referring to areas such as Jarrow, Wallsend, Sunderland, South Shields and parts of Scotland and Merseyside, which already have far too much unemployment and which any more tailoring of the shipbuilding industry would hit increasingly hard.
The principal employer in the shipbuilding industry in Tyne and Wear is Swan Hunter which employs 9,000 men. Austin and Pickersgill employs 2,850, Sunderland Shipbuilders employs 3,300, Clelands employs 500, Sunderland Forge employs 525, Clarke Hawthorne employs 1,150, British Shipbuilders Engineering and Technical employs 325, Smith Shiprepair employs 200, Tyne Shiprepair employs 1,200—that number is to be cut drastically—Wallsend Slipway employs 225, British Shipbuilders employs 100 people at the Benton house headquarters and Tyne Dock Engineering employs 75.
It is clear, therefore, that almost 20,000 people in Tyne and Wear are employed directly by British Shipbuilders or by the shipbuilding and ship repairing industry. That is only direct employment. Even more significant are the jobs that are generated by large purchases of goods and services from local suppliers. It has been estimated that for every job in British shipyards there are three indirect jobs in sub-contracted and servicing industries. If we include those indirect jobs, the significance of shipbuilding to local employment is clear.
There have recently been considerable job losses in the shipbuilding industry in Tyne and Wear. They have been a significant factor in the ever increasing rate of unemployment in the county. The current unemployment rates in Tyne and Wear, as at January 1983, are as follows. In Gateshead, 13,217 men are unemployed, in Newcastle, 18,432 men are unemployed, in North Tyneside, 10,592 men are unemployed, in South Tyneside, 11,134 men are unemployed and in Sunderland, 19,730 men are unemployed. That gives a total of 73,105 men who are unemployed. I am not being sexist. I speak only of male unemployment because that is the relevant figure when we are discussing the shipbuilding and ship repairing industry. Indeed, 22·4 per cent. of men in Tyne and Wear are unemployed. That is one of the highest rates in the country.
Since vesting day in 1977, British Shipbuilders has cut almost 8,000 jobs in the county, the most recent being the 1,200 jobs that were lost at Tyne Shiprepair. A further 1,600 redundancies are being sought—at Swan Hunter, 960; Sunderland Shipbuilders, 415; Austin and Pickersgill, 200; Clelands, 30; and Wallsend Slipway 11.

Those redundances have already been announced and have nothing to do with the questions that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition put to the Leader of the House earlier today when he asked for the Secretary of State to make a statement on the proposed 9,000 to 17,000 redundances that are being talked about in the industry.
Those proposals come extremely hard to the work force, which in recent times has increased productivity by greater flexibility and improved techniques. It seems likely that the redundancies sought by British Shipbuilders will be achieved not only by voluntary redundancies but by compulsory redundancy procedures, which will contravene the Blackpool agreement that was signed on the reconstruction of the industry in 1979 by the management and the shipbuilding unions. There appears to be no guarantee that the latest proposals represent a final cut in manpower. Further redundancies may be sought in the light of the adverse market conditions.
While there is a tendency to regard individual proposals for job reductions in isolation, it must be recognised that the continuation of the current slimming-down process will do untold damage to the long-term capabilities of the Tyne and Wear yards. International shipping experts predict that there will be an increased demand for new ships in the next few years and it is important for local and national economies that resources should be there so that we can compete and secure orders when the upturn comes.
The spending power of the 20,000 shipbuilding workers and their families in Tyne and Wear is considerable and any significant loss in employment over the years will have a devastating effect on businesses. Since the campaign "Save our shipyards" began in Tyne and Wear I have had letters from shopkeepers, tailors and various organisations that are worried about the effect that further unemployment will have on their businesses. It will also have a tremendous effect on employment in the riverside communities. A recent survey of the Tyneside shipbuilding areas showed that shipbuilding accounted for 44 per cent. of male unemployment in Wallsend; 18 per cent. in South Shields; 16 per cent. in Jarrow and Hebburn; and 12 per cent. in North Shields. I am talking not about commuters who travel to the area with pin-stripe trousers, brollies and bowler hats but about people who live within sight of the shipyard gate. Two surveys that were carried out recently showed that in the Wallsend yard 62 per cent. of the work force either lived in Wallsend or the towns adjacent. At the Austin and Pickersgill, Southwick yard 37 per cent. of the work force lived within one mile of the yard and only 1·5 per cent. lived more than five miles away. So we are talking about the closing down of shipyards affecting closely knit communities that are like pit villages and mining communities.
The work force in the shipbuilding industry to a large extent consists of highly skilled men whose skills are specific and of limited value outside their industry. That means that workers who contribute so much to shipbuilding, once made redundant, prove difficult to redeploy. A special survey of redundancies at Swan Hunter in 1979 showed that 83 per cent. of those made redundant have not found employment after a year. The results were far worse than for similar redundancies at the same time in other industries. There are currently 5,000 former shipyard workers in the Tyne and Wear area who are out of work with no hope at all of getting a job.
In the past, shipbuilding has been a valuable source of apprenticeships for local youth and further contract in


the industry are a serious threat to them. With the current high level of youth unemployment in the area we can ill afford to lose such apprenticeships.
Much has been achieved by the shipbuilding and repair industries over recent years at great cost to the work force. We must not now throw all that away because of the world recession. Since nationalisation the shipyards have experienced a major restructuring at the cost of over 25,000 jobs. The work force made great sacrifices to produce slimmer, more efficient and competitive British shipyards. Much has been achieved in industrial relations and productivity. There were 182 wage bargaining unions at the time of nationalisation and they have been slimmed down to one for the manual workers and one for the staff workers. Since nationalisation, when the men realised that at last they had something to contribute to the industry, pay rises below the rate of inflation have been accepted. Indeed, shipbuilding workers have dropped from third in the wages league to 19th, and this year they have been told by British Shipbuilders that there will be no increase at all.
I accept that £600 million has been invested in the shipbuilding industry since nationalisation. The Minister will probably say that that is a tremendous amount. However, one must compare that with the fact that last year Japan invested £626 million in its seven shipyards and Korea is investing £400 million a year. The British shipbuilding industry must compete against such yards with a high capital investment. Failure to support our yards at this time will be to waste the good will, investment and co-operation of the trade unions since nationalisation.
Britain is a major trading nation and as such depends heavily on its merchant fleet, which carries 44 per cent. of its seaborne trade. Therefore, maintenance of the fleet is essential not only for strategic reasons but for our balance of payments. In 1981 merchandise exports were valued at £51 billion and imports at £48 billion. As well as carrying the United Kingdom trade our shipping industry makes a valuable contribution to invisible earnings by exporting its services. In 1981 an invisible earnings credit of £3·9 million was generated by our merchant fleet but that has been on the decline for a considerable time. In the past seven years the merchant fleet has fallen from 1,614 ships to under 900 ships. For an island nation that is an alarming prospect.
I was present at the Adjournment debate that was initiated by my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott) yesterday. I was disgusted at the arrogant attitude of the Under-Secretary of State for Trade. If our trade and merchant fleet are in the hands of such people, God help us in the future.
When we talk about investment and competition between the Korean, Japanese and other shipyards we must remember that British Shipbuilders never had much investment when it was in private hands. British Shipbuilders was nationalised because it was failing in private hands. A survey that was carried out in the 1970s showed that for every British shipbuilding worker the assets were £825 compared with over £1,000 in Germany; £1,200 in Italy; £1,800 in Sweden and £2,800 in Japan. That is the sort of competition that the British shipyard workers are up against. Many Governments are supporting not only their shipbuilding industry but their shipping industry. Lloyd's List of Wednesday 16 February says that New Zealand is set to toughen up its shipping laws and that

it has hinted that it would help the nation's shipowners in international trade by extending export incentives that are currently available to other industries.
Nowhere does that Lloyd's List article state that the Government intend to introduce ship credit guarantees. At a time of world recession, other nations are at least trying to prop up their shipping and shipbuilding industries. The Government say that we must have open and fair competition. That was ably summed up by Sir Robert Atkinson, the chairman of British Shipbuilders, when he said that we fight to the Marquess of Queensberry rules when everyone else is involved in all-in wrestling. It is nonsense for the Government to say that there can be no protection for our shipping and shipbuilding industries because we are competing in an open market.
Even in Europe our shipping is unfairly penalised. France, Italy, Spain and Sweden give better credit facilities and more attractive packages to shipowners. I do, however, have some complaints about British shipowners. It is about time that they showed some patriotism and placed orders in this country. In answer to a question in the European Parliament, it was discovered that Belgium orders 94·6 per cent. of ships in its own shipyards; France, 91·8 per cent.; Italy, 99·4 per cent.; but the United Kingdom, only 47 per cent. British shipowners have the worst record for ordering ships in home yards, and they purchased only 40 per cent. in United Kingdom yards in 1981.
United Kingdom orders that were not placed with home yards did not go to the European Community but went mainly to the Far East. One of the largest cruise liners ever to be built, worth £90 million, was ordered in Finland. When my right hon. Friend the Member for Salford, West (Mr. Orme) asked the Prime Minister why that liner could not be built in Harland and Wolff or Swan Hunter, he was told that there would be insufficient finishing trades to build the liner on the river Tyne. I have never heard such nonsense in my life, considering that 5,000 unemployed British shipyard workers are kicking their heels on street corners.
I do not want to say too much about the Atlantic Conveyor, which was sunk in the Falklands. Lord Matthews of Cunard, through his newspapers, told the British people during the Falklands conflict that they should be patriotic, but as soon as he received his £10 million insurance settlement he decided that the new ship would be built in South Korea. It is about time that British shipowners were a bit more patriotic, bought British and gave jobs to people who helped them so much in years of need.
The chairman of British Shipbuilders, Sir Robert Atkinson, complained bitterly to the Secretary of State for Industry about the CEGB order for a cable-laying ship going to South Korea. That is another example of a nationalised industry ordering ships outside this country. That is an absolute disgrace in view of the capacity available here. British Shipbuilders has one of the best records on ordering and buying British. In 1981, out of £550 million that it spent, 94 per cent. of the orders went to British and British-based industries. British Steel was one of the major recipients of those orders.
I was annoyed when on Tuesday 15 February The Times published an article by Barrie Clement entitled "BSC is bypassing own ships". It said:


Foreign ships are being chartered by the British Steel Corporation while three of four of its own British-crewed vessels are laid up.
Of the foreign vessels on charter,
two are Norwegian, one of which sails under the Panamanian flag; another is French; two are registered in Hong Kong and one is German-owned but registered in Liberia.
That is how other nationalised industries behave, when British Shipbuilders is trying its best to buy British.

Mr. John Evans: Does my hon. Friend agree that that catalogue casts considerable doubt on the Prime Minister's campaign to buy British? If even our nationalised industries ignore the Prime Minister's request to buy British, does not that suggest that her campaign is merely a facade?

Mr. Dixon: I entirely agree with my hon. Friend, and nothing made a bigger mockery of that than the Atlantic Conveyor order. However, all the arguments from the Opposition and the trade unions, as well as public pressure, persuaded Lord Matthews and the Government to change their minds and prevented that order going to South Korea.
I have spent a long time discussing the implications of further unemployment and redundancies in the shipbuilding, ship repairing and related industries in Tyne and Wear, and especially in my constituency of Jarrow. I appreciate that we are in a world recession. I also appreciate that many shipowners must run their ships on freight rates that barely cover fuel and crew costs. However, this is only a short-term problem, and we require some short-term assistance for both the shipbuilding and shipping industries.
My hon. Friend the Member for Newton said that the Prime Minister had asked people to buy British, and I remarked that the British Steel Corporation was chartering foreign ships when its own ships were laid up. Had the former chairman of the BSC, who has now moved to the mining industry at an enormous fee, been employed in America, he would not have been able to do that under the Jones Act 1920. He would have been unable to carry out the practice that he initiated in the BSC of chartering foreign ships.
Tyne and Wear is asking for the reintroduction of a 40 per cent. investment allowance for the purchase of new ships from British yards and for major refurbishment of British shipping. The General Council of British Shipping has also called for financial support to allow British Shipbuilders and the ship repair industry to compete on equal terms with foreign competitors.
No one can tell me that the South Koreans, in spite of their low wages and long working hours, can tender such low prices. It means that if British shipbuilding workers accepted no wages at all, they would still be unable to compete with South Korean prices. No one can tell me that the South Korean Government are not supporting their industry.
The same thing will happen to shipping as happened to the motor cycle industry. We shall have no shipbuilding capacity at all and shall have to rely completely on foreign companies to provide our ships.
Yesterday, Tyne and Wear county council met the Secretary of State for Industry. At the beginning of my speech I complained that the Secretary of State for Industry had not once stood at the Dispatch Box in the past

few months to talk about British shipbuilding, despite the major build-up that we had not so long ago and the recession. He met Tyne and Wear county council yesterday because of the Darlington by-election. He spoke in support of the Tory candidate at Darlington, and Tyne and Wear county councillors went to the meeting and told him that he should meet a deputation because of the situation. The right hon. Gentleman did not have the guts to refuse at the public meeting. Had it not been for that, the county council would not have met the Secretary of State and would probably have met the Under-Secretary of State or the Minister responsible in Committee for the British Shipbuilders Bill.
We also need a scrap-and-build scheme. We have talked about it for years. In 1977 the EC and Commissioner Davignon talked about it. In 1979 there was a report, yet people are still only talking about it. It is about time that Britain decided unilaterally to have a scrap-and-build scheme so that we can support our fleet and our shipbuilding industry. The Minister talks about article 5 of the fifth directive on shipbuilding. Article 4 says:
Rescue aid intended to maintain a shipbuilding, ship conversion or ship-repair undertaking, pending a definitive solution of the problems confronting the undertakings concerned in order to deal with acute social problems and the regional effect which may arise, may be considered compatible with the Common Market under this directive.
It is no good the Minister saying that we cannot aid our shipbuilding industry in isolation. Article 4 gives the Government the power to do that and it is about time that they did something.
The Tyne and Wear deputation put several proposals to the Secretary of State yesterday. There is considerable potential in the production of smaller specialist vessels. The types of vessel considered suitable are fishing and fishery protection vessels, and geological and hydrographical ships and tugs. They are medium to high technology vessels, which require considerable expertise in areas in which the United Kingdom is among the world leaders. If the Government gave some help, there could be a major export boom. It has also been suggested that in the short term, if the Government felt inclined to help areas such as Tyne and Wear, they could declare both sides of the river Tyne and the river Wear enterprise zones—although I have my reservations about them—which would free British Shipbuilders from paying rates and would not impose any burden on the already hard-pressed local authorities.
I may have spoken for too long, but in the letter that I received last night from Mr. Speaker's office I was told that I could speak until noon. However, in conclusion, I say that the Government must help areas such as Tyne and Wear, where unemployment is already far too high. Those areas rely on shipbuilding as a major manufacturing 'industry. Indeed, 95,000 people work in manufacturing industry and, of those, 20,000 are employed in shipbuilding. Therefore, 20 per cent. of those employed in manufacturing are employed in shipbuilding. The industry offers predominantly male employment. If the Government do not take action, they will be responsible for the industrial economic and social rape of our area.

The Under-Secretary of State for Industry (Mr. John Butcher): I fully understand the motivation and feelings of the hon. Member for Jarrow (Mr. Dixon). He has put up a pugnacious defence of his constituents'


interests, of the shipbuilding industry and, in particular, of Tyne and Wear. I visited that area about two weeks ago, not for by-election purposes, but purely on Department of Industry business. I am glad that the hon. Member has raised this issue. I welcome the opportunity to make it clear to the House that the Government are keenly aware of the deep concern in the Tyne and Wear area about the prospects for the shipbuilding industry.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Industry met representatives of the Tyne and Wear county council—and of local unions—on 29 March to discuss this whole issue. They emphasised the point that the area is heavily dependent on shipbuilding and shiprepairing. Fifteen per cent. of the local working population are directly employed in these industries. Local supplier industries depend on them, too. The area has already suffered substantial job losses in shipbuilding and shiprepairing. The round of redundancies announced by British Shipbuilders in January fell heavily on the area and added to already very high levels of unemployment.
Shipbuilding, like any other industry, cannot be isolated from the effects of deep recession in its markets—and markets for most of British Shipbuilders' products are, as the chairman, Sir Robert Atkinson, has been stressing for some time, quite appalling. The shiprepair market has been grim for several years. The merchant shipbuilding market has never really recovered from the slump in orders which started in 1973. At the bottom of the last recession in 1978 new world orders were equivalent only to about a quarter of then available capacity. The market improved substantially in 1979 and 1980, but from a very low base.
The boom in bulk carriers orders in late 1980 and early 1981 brought many orders to Tyne and Wear yards. But the boom burst and with the slump in world trade the world shipbuilding market faltered in 1981 and slumped again last year. The level of new orders was equivalent to around half present world capacity. Scrapping rates have more than doubled since 1980. The amount of tonnage in lay-up has increased seven to tenfold and freight rates have gone through the floor. With the overhang of so much spare shipping capacity it is likely that the market for new ships will be very difficult for some time to come, even though world trade is expected to pick up again shortly.
Against that background, it is not surprising that Tyne and Wear should have been hit hard over the past five or six years. The area has two of British Shipbuilders' main merchant yards to which the hon. Gentleman referred—Austin and Pickersgill and Sunderland Shipbuilders—a small merchant yard, Clelands, the mixed yard, Swan Hunter, and a marine engine building works. There has not been the work available to support an industry of the size that British Shipbuilders took over in 1977. Restructuring was inevitable. If BS cannot win enough orders to maintain order books, it has to be for the corporation's commercial judgment to adjust capacity to meet demand.
Although the overall picture for shipbuilding in the area has been bleak, there have been some recent successes. Only last week Austin and Pickersgill announced that it had won an order for two cargo-carrying liners from Ethiopia. Just before Christmas Swan Hunter received orders for two frigates Worth £250 million as part of the package of Falklands replacement ships. I join the hon. Member for Jarrow in commending the excellent work that

the local ship repairers and workers put in during those very difficult days at the time of and immediately after the Falklands crisis.
In Sunderland, British Shipbuilders has also won a contract to supply engines for the new Birmingham power station. In current market conditions British Shipbuilders' new merchant orders have been won against acute foreign competition and with considerable support from the Government. Opposition Members are curiously silent about the support that the Government have given to the industry. Our first actions on coming into office were to ensure the continuation of the intervention fund and of the shipbuilding redundancy payments scheme. Both those schemes were on the point of lapsing. More recently, we have significantly increased the value of the redundancy payments available.

Mr. Frederick Willey: We very much appreciate the aid that was given by the Government—whom we met some months ago—for the Ethiopian orders. However, can the hon. Gentleman say whether any progress has been made on the Mexican orders, which are crucial to Sunderland shipbuilders?

Mr. Butcher: I should be delighted to deal with that question. I appreciate the concern that many hon. Members have about the method and the support that is given through my hon. Friends in the Department of Trade. They give considerable assistance, particularly in regard to orders that we hope to obtain from Third world countries and the developing countries. I shall deal with the right hon. Gentleman's point and hope to be in touch with him as soon as possible.
As I was saying, the Labour party has made great play of the support that it would give to shipbuilding should it be returned to office. It says that it would increase investment in the industry, but what is its record? When the Labour party left office, capital investment in British Shipbuilders was at a very low level—little more than care and maintenance and finishing off capital projects that were started before the yards were vested in the public corporation.
In contrast, in 1981–82, under the Conservative Government, capital investment doubled. In the current year—the year that is about to end—it has again increased significantly. For 1983–84 we have approved a higher external financing limit which accommodates capital expenditure of £90 million. That is a fourfold increase on the levels of four years ago. That level of expenditure compares favourably with the frequently quoted level of expenditure undertaken in. Japan. Japan is believed to be undertaking investment of £600 million, but the Japanese industry is, of course, significantly larger than ours.
Those involved in the industry must bear in mind, during the current pay negotiations, that finance for capital and for wages come from the same pot. The more restrained the wage demands, the more the industry can invest in its future.
The Labour party says that it will encourage the public sector to expand and diversify and give it freedom to raise funds on the capital markets. The reality is that it is doing its best to damage the corporation's ability to respond flexibly to the market, and to draw on all possible resources, by opposing the measures in the current British Shipbuilders Bill. The Bill will enable British Shipbuilders to draw on the resources of the private sector and to enter


into joint ventures, but the Labour party is threatening to break up any joint ventures and to renationalise. I do not believe that the Labour party's record allows it to lecture the Government in the strident terms that have been deployed, not only in this debate, but in previous debates.
In the current thin shipbuilding market, and with acute competition for scarce orders, there has inevitably been criticism that British aid does not match what is offered by our foreign competitors. It is often asserted that foreign competition—particularly from Japan and Korea—is unfair. While in some countries—for example, Belgium and Denmark—shipbuilding credit schemes are more favourable than ours, their credit, unlike ours, is open to their ship owners whether they build at home or abroad. They do not, as we do, give production subsidies as well. In relation to the combined value of credit and production subsidies in the major shipbuilding countries, the United Kingdom is in about the middle of the league.
The Governments of Korea and Japan help their industries, as do the Governments of the United Kingdom and other shipbuilding countries. Efforts are continuing in the OECD working party on shipbuilding to bring about concerted reductions in subsidies worldwide. Japan and Korea have substantial advantages in productivity. BS has estimated that Japanese productivity is between two and two-and-a-half times greater than ours in the United Kingdom. I know that the corporation is making strenuous efforts to bridge that gap, but, at a time when costs and prices are being cut to the bone, that factor must have a big effect.
I congratulate BS and the work force on the very positive attitude they are taking and on the great strides they are now making in productivity. I particularly commend to the House the investment programme that BS is making in computer-aided design and manufacture. We endorse and support it, because it is one of the major factors that will help BS to compete in delivery and lead times, which are important factors. We have to be concerned not only with price but with being able to respond flexibly to new orders. We believe that investment in that area will bring significant benefits to BS.
We recognise that support for the industry, however large, cannot insulate it from the market place, and that hardship has arisen in the north-east region. For that reason we have provided substantial financial assistance to the north-east. As a West Midlander, it is with somewhat mixed feelings that I say that under this Government the north-east has received over £1·7 billion of aid. That figure does not include assistance to British Shipbuilders and the British Steel Corporation; it does not include Manpower Services Commission expenditure and a large range of other forms of Government expenditure. The whole of the Tyne and Wear area is a special development area, where the highest level of regional assistance is available.
The future of the north-east region must lie in widening the industrial base and getting it away from an overdependence on traditional industries. We are not obsessed with the new industries. We want to use the new technologies and to see their application in the established and existing industries, to help them to become more competitive.
I am glad that new growth industries are already well established, with, for example, over 120 firms employing 12,000 people in electronics. We shall also help here by

continuing to encourage, through the support for the innovation programme, the development and application of new technology.
The Government share the very deep concern of the people of Tyne and Wear about the plight of the shipbuilding industry. We have supported the industry massively already, and will continue to do so. We have recognised the uncertainty facing the industry and have increased British Shipbuilders' external financing limit for 1983–84 to £160 million from this year's £122 million.
The Government have said—as have the Minister of State and the Secretary of State—that merchant shipping in the United Kingdom will continue to need support for the foreseeable future. The Government are not sitting back. We have not been dispassionate or coldhearted in the manner in which we have reviewed the needs of the shipbuilding industry.
The hon. Member for Jarrow said that he was most concerned about people on the scrapheap. So are the Government. It is unfortunate that there is not time today to discuss other aspects of the issue. It is necessary to look at the schemes by which people can be retrained—and retrained again, if need be. We can restore some flexibility to the job markets in the north-east and utilise the skills available in the north-east.

Mr. Dixon: The Minister talks about retraining people from the shipbuilding industry, but we live in an island in a world in which seven-eighths of the surface is covered by water. We rely on 98 per cent. of our trade—by weight—being carried by ships. What is the point of retraining shipyard workers? We require a shipbuilding industry, just as we require a shipping industry. There is no point in retraining shipbuilding workers so that they can produce plastic knobs. We shall require ships in the future, and shipbuilders to build and maintain them. We should be retaining them, not retraining them.

Mr. Butcher: The hon. Gentleman's point is well taken. I thought that I had shown that the Government regard the continuing retention of shipbuilding capacity as a priority. We want it to be competitive and balanced. We want it to be able to build warships and merchant ships, and to re-equip and refurbish them. All those elements of the shipbuilding industry are required. My hon. Friend the Minister of State and my right hon. Friend in the Department of Industry, as I mentioned earlier, have made very strong statements in this regard, and I hope that it is not a point at issue.
We appreciate that we shall need the capability to which the hon. Gentleman referred. We cannot opt out. I hope that he will accept that there has to be retraining even within the shipbuilding industry, and that there has to be flexibility in the labour market. We are looking for flexibility and for more dynamism in the job market. We cannot always do what our grandfathers did. I fully appreciate the loyalty that exists within families and the pride in the fact that skills continue to go from father to son, but that cannot always happen. Although we all hold the industry—and indeed the community in the northeast—in the very greatest affection, the people there must also look to the developments of the future, as I am sure they are already trying to do.
For the reasons that I have given, I say that the Government are not sitting back. We have a realistic and flexible approach. The shipbuilding industry has benefited


from a number of the measures that we have brought into being. We hope to see a successful shipbuilding industry. We hope that Sir Robert Atkinson will do his very best to ensure that we have a productive and competitive shipbuilding industry.

Printing Industry (United States Copyright Act)

Mr. Chris Patten: I am grateful for the opportunity, even at this time on Maundy Thursday, to follow a debate about one of our great British industries and to raise a matter which is of considerable interest to the printing industry particularly in my constituency.
The matter was first brought to my attention by one of the many printing firms in Bath which make a major contribution to the economic life of the city and the surrounding area. Hon. Members will know that the printing industry has been going through a tough time during the past few years. It has suffered job losses, falling sales, profits and investment and a number of bankruptcies. Its difficulties result partly from matters which have not been sorted out for a number of years and partly because of the extremely high exchange rate of a couple of years ago, high energy costs and the disgraceful disinclination of local education authorities to spend the money which is available in the rate support grant for the purchase of school books. That, however, is perhaps a matter for another occasion.
The decision taken last year by the United States Congress to continue the back-door protection of the American printing industry came, in that climate, as the last straw for many good British firms. That Congressional decision, to which I shall refer in more detail later, raises much broader questions going far beyond the industry's immediate problems. I speak as someone who is an unashamed admirer of the United States and its cultural and political contributions to this country, to Europe and beyond. However, on this issue the United States has behaved irresponsibly and with an absence of that candour and straightforwardness which should characterise plain dealings, one would hope, between friends.
Secondly, I speak as someone who is an instinctive free trader who notes with some anxiety the way in which the over-vigorous practice of free market economics domestically is driving all OECD countries towards the most illiberal, anti-market economics internationally. On this subject, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that, unless the United States behaves within the spirit and the letter of the undertakings which it has given from time to time, we shall need to protect our printing and other markets from United States exports.
This is a particularly grave issue which demands and deserves the most urgent political attention. I know that Ministers are familiar with the sad and sorry tale, not least because of the efforts of ray hon. Friend the Member for Skipton (Mr. Watson), who has been such a stalwart friend of the printing industry and who brought these problems to the attention of the House and the Ministers on a number of occasions. I do not therefore need to go through the history in great detail. However, there are one or two salient features that I should like to sketch before urging a couple of courses of action upon the Department of Trade and the Government.
For almost a century new English language books in the United States by American citizens or residents of the United States have had to be manufactured in the United States to obtain copyright protection. That represents an ingenious way—not least because the United States


somehow received a derogation from the Florence agreement to continue its protectionist devices—of keeping British and other foreign printers out of the United States market. Clearly, because of the language which both unites and divides us, this is a problem for British printers rather than mainland continental European printers.
The manufacturing clause was due to be repealed in 1982. However, after a good deal of strenuous lobbying by the American printing industry, which does not emerge from this business smelling of roses, Congress renewed the clause until 1986, overriding in the process a Presidential veto. It will not have escaped the notice of hon. Members that 1982 was a mid-term election year in the United States and that 1986 is also a mid-term election year.
We can doubtless expect a good deal of pressure from the Printing Industry of America directed towards the re-election prospects of members of the House of Representatives and senators when the clause comes up again in 1986. In 1982, the PIA awarded those responsible for preventing the repeal, for once and all, of the manufacturing clause something that it calls the Gutenberg award, which must have had Caxton turning in his grave. I dare say that in 1986 that award will be available once again, together presumably with substantial donations to political re-election funds.
Perhaps we can consider what is now happening. First, the International Trade Commission in Washington is considering the matter—the Minister will correct me if I am wrong—and I believe that the commission is due to report in July. The House Ways and Means Committee has undertaken to introduce legislation to repeal the manufacturing clause if the International Trade Commission reports that that clause represents an unfair trading practice. However, a promise to introduce legislation is no guarantee that that legislation will be passed. I remind hon. Members that the legislation will be considered by Congress as we get nearer to the mid-term Congressional elections. Doubtless the Gutenberg award will be wheeled out again then should it prove to be necessary.
The second action that is being taken is that the European Commission has referred the subject to GATT. Clearly it was right to do that. There is little doubt that, as the European Commission has argued, the clause is a
deliberate and arbitrary barrier to trade.
It offends against article 11 of GATT, because, as the new clause was not enacted until after the repeal of the earlier clause had come into effect, it is technically a new non-tariff barrier. The manufacturing clause is also in breach of article 13 of GATT, because it discriminates in favour of Canada which is exempted from its provisions.
In the light of those clear transgressions of the GATT articles, the European Community is properly starting proceedings under article 22, which deals with compensation for trade barriers.
I wish to make three general points and to draw two specific conclusions. First, it is difficult to assess accurately what share of the United States market could be won by European, mainly British, printers. We have been shut out of United States markets since 1891 and no reliable, up-to-date statistics are available. It is difficult to make anything but a broad brush guesstimate of the likely effects.
However, the United States' negotiators and the PIA cannot have things both ways in their consideration of the likely effect of allowing British printers a stake in the American market. The Americans justify the protectionism of the manufacturing clause by arguing that allowing British printers into their market would be extremely damaging. Some dubious figures have been adduced to that effect. But the Americans justify their argument that action should not be taken against them under the GATT by claiming that the damage done to British and European printers is not substantial.
If the removal of the manufacturing clause would have a substantial effect on American printers, it follows that its retention must have a substantial effect on British printers. Therefore, the United States should expect substantial repercussions. If, on the other hand, the retention of the manufacturing clause has negligible effects on British and European printers, it follows that its removal would have negligible effects on American printers. Either way, it is extremely difficult to justify the clause.
My second general observation is that it is especially galling that the United States is behaving in this way towards the European industry. Some countries impose restrictions on printing imports that are as indefensible as are those applied by the United States, but Europe does not fall into that category. Indeed, because European countries signed the Florence agreement, the United States printing industry has a virtually free run in the European market. It is the only industry that I can think of that enjoys such protection within the EC. Europe should surely get at least the same sort of treatment as Canada receives in the United States market.
My third general observation is that, because the United States assured the European Community during the discussions on the Tokyo round that the manufacturing clause would expire, negotiations on that issue were dropped. The fact that the clause was not dropped was a breach of the understandings reached between the United States and the EC and has unbalanced the final tranche of concessions reached during the Tokyo round. The American negotiators showed a sly disregard of the conventions that should determine negotiations on such matters.
The House looks forward to hearing the reply of my hon. Friend the Minister for Consumer Affairs. I hope that he will tell us what the Government have done and propose to do, but I shall make two suggestions. We need to put as much pressure as possible on the United States to ensure that Congress is aware that, unless the manufacturing clause is dumped, there will be retaliation against United States exporters and demands for further remedies under GATT.
I should like to be totally convinced that the Department of Trade will add its weight to the argument. I do not want to labour the point, but I recall that last year the Department of Trade and the Government in general—I shall not quote from the letters—argued that they were reluctant to ask President Reagan to exercise his veto on the ground that he would be expending political capital to no effect if he did. The President was prepared to use his veto, and it strikes me as being a trifle curious that at that time we were more concerned about the President's political capital than he evidently seemed to be.
I need some reassurance that we shall pursue this matter with vigour. If the Americans behave badly, there is no


reason why we should have to suffer the consequences. To put the point bluntly and in a way which might be better understood by members of the House of Representatives and senators, especially in a mid-term election year, I do not see why my constituents should lose their jobs to help re-elect one or two American Congressmen from the boondocks who have not got the gumption to stand up to an industrial lobby which does not give a fig for GATT, the Florence agreement or the printing industry in other countries.
At present we cannot retaliate against the United States printing industry because of our signing of the Florence agreement. That means that United States firms can go on doing well over £12 million worth of business a year in our market without a care in the world. Unless the United States changes its mind, and unless the Congress drops the manufacturing clause, I believe that we should press for a get-out clause to the Florence agreement—a derogation just like the one secured by the United States—so that we can protect our own market from unfair competition from the United States and, while we are about it, from eastern Europe as well.
We are discussing the livelihood of one of our greatest and oldest industries. It is that livelihood which is at stake. I hope that we can get proper assurances from my hon. Friend the Minister on some of the issues that I have raised which are so important to the industry as a whole and to many of my constituents.

The Minister for Consumer Affairs (Dr. Gerard Vaughan): I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Bath (Mr. Patten) for raising this matter on the Adjournment. It is an extremely serious problem, and I know that the British print industry will be glad that my hon. Friend has drawn attention to it.
As my hon. Friend said, book production is an intensely competitive market and our industry is facing severe competition from many different sources in the world, including the far east. In those circumstances, it is extremely galling to have to endure a totally artificial and out-of-date trade barrier in the form of this United States manufacturing clause. The Government agree with my hon. Friend that this is a handicap which cannot be justified and which ought to be removed as soon as possible.
The Government share the industry's objection to the clause, and we are as determined as my hon. Friend and the industry that it should be done away with if possible. It was introduced in 1891 to protect what was then an infant United States printing industry, and it effectively prohibits the import or distribution within the United States literature in the English language by an American author unless it has been manufactured in the United States or Canada.
It is clear that the clause has long since outlived its original purpose. Its retention in United States law is now totally unjustified, particularly when one considers the strength and efficiency of the United States printing industry today. It is well able to stand on its own feet. It is well able to trade in the international market in exactly the same way as our industry has to trade.
I agree with my hon. Friend that the clause is contrary to the United States' GATT obligations and must be put right. As my hon. Friend said, the clause was due to lapse

in July last year, and we made strong representations, both written and personal, to the United States Government. I shall put on record what we have done.
We wrote in March 1981. We wrote again in December 1981, and the Secretary of State for Trade wrote in May 1982 to the United States trade representative, William Brock. In July the Minister for Trade raised the subject with the United States Secretary of Commerce, Mr. Malcolm Baldrige. In November 1982 the Secretary of State again raised the matter with William Brock. Only last week the Minister for Trade again raised the subject. My hon. Friend will agree that we have certainly tried by direct representation to the United States Government.
At the same time, the European Community made representations to the United States Administration. 1 shall not list the detail, but written representations were made in December 1981, March 1982, April 1982, December 1982 and February 1983. We are putting all the strength that we can into representations to the United States Administration.
Congress was clearly influenced by a strong American printing lobby. It voted for the clause to be extended to 1986. President Reagan exercised his right of veto over Congress. We were pleased about that, but unfortunately our success was shortlived, since Congress, in an unusual way, overturned the veto a few weeks later.
Since then we have had two objectives. The main objective is to persuade the United States to remove the clause as soon as possible. The second objective is to obtain some compensation for our printers from the Americans through GATT. In relation to the first objective, we are continuing to make representations to the American Government. We supported the British printing industry when it recently contributed to the American international trade commission's inquiry into the long-term effects of the abolition of the clause.
In spite of overriding the President's veto, Congress was anxious that the matter should be examined, and that is why it commissioned the ITC study. My hon. Friend is correct in saying that we expect the report in summer, although we are not sure in which month.
In the GATT forum the Americans were at first reluctant to discuss any compensation. They argue that the damage suffered by Community printers is minimal. They think that it involves about $7 million a year My hon. Friend is right to say that that is at variance with their contention, which was accepted by Congress last year, that the abolition of the clause will lead to the loss of 357,000 jobs in the United States. The two opinions do not match. There is a clear contradiction. If the clause is highly effective in protecting the United States industry, our calculation of compensation of at least $250 million is correct and they should be considering a higher rate of compensation.
We are represented in GATT by the European Community. We are urging the European Community to continue to take a strong line with the Americans. My hon. Friend referred to retaliation, which was one of his two proposals. We could take retaliatory measures, but I suggest to him and to the industry that such a conflict would not be in anyone's interests. Wide implications could follow from setting up a trade barrier of our own. We should go down that road only if we are sure where it will lead. We could end up doing more harm than good to our industry. Meanwhile, we shall continue to discuss


compensation and we hope that the American Government, through the GATT machinery, will make a reasonable offer.
Finally, to use my hon. Friend's words, we will pursue this vigorously. While my hon. Friend's suggestion of an approach through the Florence agreement is interesting, I do not think it worth pursuing, but I shall consider it. We are committed to supporting the printing industry's efforts to get the clause removed as soon as possible. We shall continue to press hard in GATT for an adequate remedy to the denial of access by our printing industry to the American printing market. We believe strongly in our industry's cause and I assure my hon. Friend that we shall do all that we can to bring the matter to a satisfactory conclusion as soon as possible. Once again I congratulate my hon. Friend on bringing this serious matter before the House today.

Unemployment (East Bolton)

Mr. David Young: I thank the House for the opportunity to raise these issues on an Adjournment debate because they are of tremendous interest to my constituency. Although I do not endorse any of the Government's measures on unemployment, I do not think that it is the purpose of the debate to argue party policy. My objective is to draw to the attention of the Minister the many difficulties affecting my constituency and to press for ways to alleviate them.
My constituency was a textile constituency but, as the textile industry declined, engineering, papermaking, electronics and commerce replaced it. The fact that Bolton for so long had low unemployment figures compared with the north-west and Britain generally was due to the initiative and drive of its people to diversify into other newer industries as the traditional industries of the area declined. Since 1979 unemployment has escalated. In March 1979 unemployment stood at 5·8 per cent.; in March 1980, 6·3 per cent.; in March 1981, 12·3 per cent.; in March 1982, 15·5 per cent.; and in March 1983, 15·5 per cent. The figure for March 1983 is on the new adjusted figure and therefore the true number of unemployed is much higher.
Although engineering and textiles are the main industries in the area, it is important to note that my remarks refer equally to the other industries that have gone by the board. None of the figures today takes into account the redundancies at the Littlewoods mail order firm, the redundancies taking place at the Trinity paper mill, or the redundancies in the weaving industry that may shortly occur.
Although I intend to refer to some larger firms, I am also concerned about the closure of many small or medium-sized firms that have gained an international reputation— for example, Ryders machine Tools—embodying the native skill of the north-west that spread out to gain markets all over the world. I am concerned equally with small and large firms.
My main worry is about the escalating unemployment in the north-west where the native skills of the people are being thrown on to the industrial scrap-heap. There is a problem also with the service industries. Although Bolton's local authority has not yet announced any redundancies, if the pressure of Government cuts continues that may happen. The local hospital was given the go-ahead a few years ago, when I initiated an Adjournment debate in the House. However, there are signs that the programme is slipping. If that happens, it will be impossible to slot in the staff now being trained on the assumption that the hospital will be ready on time. I am concerned not only with existing unemployment, but with the future of many people currently in employment whose jobs may be in jeopardy.
The Minister will recall that I led a delegation from Bolton about the rearrangement of manpower services committees. We hoped that there would be a district committee. The format has now changed and I am not aware of the up-to-date position because the local authority has not received in writing details of the exact proposals. When the delegation met the Minister, he acknowledged that Bolton and the manpower services initiatives had approached the problems with drive and enthusiasm.


People from other authorities have come to Bolton to see the projects initiated by the local authority. We told the Minister that there should be a representative from Bolton on any committee set up to govern the schemes. However, there is no Bolton representative on the new Greater Manchester manpower committee. I ask the Minister for guidance about how Bolton will be represented in future on the new area committee.
We also told the Minister that we wanted a local subcommittee to look after Bolton. I do not wish to name other authorities, but we made it clear to the Minister that we had moved much further ahead than many of the authorities with which Bolton is grouped. Any grouping on a committee would be a levelling down, not a levelling up, for Bolton. I hope that the skill, ability, drive and inventiveness that we in Bolton have already shown will not be lost in an arrangement in which we who have proven experience are denied a say in the future of the schemes in our areas.
Long-term unemployment is another factor in Bolton. If one compares the fourth quarter of 1980 with the fourth quarter of 1982 in the Bolton travel-to-work area, it is clear that the number of people who have been unemployed for more than three years has increased by about 61 per cent. There has been a massive increase of about 745·5 per cent. in the number of people unemployed for two to three years. In February 1983, 47 people in Bolton were chasing one job. In the Greater Manchester council area, 43 people were chasing one job. In other words, there is severe longterm unemployment which is affecting not just young people but many people whom I shall call the mature unemployed, who tend to be people who have financial responsibilities.
I tabled a question to the Minister some months ago, and the figures that he gave showed that the increase for those over the age of 50 who had been out of work for more than 52 weeks between October 1981 and October 1982 was 51·4 per cent. I am reliably informed that the peak earnings age group of 20 to 44 shows an increase in unemployment during the past three years of 1,094 per cent. among those who had been out of work for two to three years. I can give the Minister the source of those figures if he wishes. I do not want to bandy figures, but they show that there is an important long-term unemployment problem in Bolton.
Although many schemes emanating from the Department affect the young unemployed, it is noticeable that there seems to be no relationship with the large number of what I have called the mature unemployed who represent a large proportion of the register. Many of those people are working class and many of them are middle class. Many of them have managerial skills and many are skilled craftsmen. They now find themselves without job prospects, not only in Bolton but in the surrounding area.
I therefore ask the Minister to look closely at the possibility of retraining the mature unemployed. I certainly hope that he will talk to his hon. Friends in the Department of Health and Social Security, because, although that would not resolve the problem, it would help if the Government were to adopt suggestions for earlier retirement for those people for whom there is no prospect of employment by reducing the retirement age.
There is another problem in Bolton because we have a large ethnic community, which represents 7 per cent. of the population. However, it has twice as many unemployed as the host population. One out of five men

in the host population in Bolton is at present without a job. I am informed that in the ethnic community the level is double that.
What schemes has the Minister for dealing with that specialised problem? The need is not only for workshop schemes but for language and numeracy tuition. I am told that one successful scheme in a college in Bolton may have to cease after this year because of lack of finance from the Manpower Services Commission.
Two other matters, which are worrying, are of significant importance to Bolton, and could swell greatly the level of unemployment. The first depends on the decision that should be taken by the Ministry of Defence to award a contract to British Aerospace rather than the Americans. When unemployment is so high, it is of concern to me, as a Member of Parliament, that I have to lobby a Minister because there could be a danger of the contract going overseas. Were that contract to go overseas, it would mean that 900 jobs in British Aerospace, which is the largest engineering employer in the area, would be lost in four or five years. Future contracts could depend on this one. Without it, the factory might eventually close. If that happened, it would take with it 367 apprentices. The decision on that contract has yet to be taken. The Government have stated that they intend to close Horwich rail engineering works. With it will go 1,209 jobs. If that closure takes place, it will take with it 214 apprentices.
I have quoted one possible and one actual danger affecting employment in Bolton. That must be set against the general decline in engineering, which is the main industry in Bolton. Where will those people get jobs? In the Greater Manchester council area 163,628 people were in engineering in 1978. In 1982 the figure had fallen to 120,861. The number of apprentice craftsmen has dropped from 1,446 to 503 in the three years ending in 1982.
That brings me to a statement which affects those two cases. The amendment standing in the name of the Prime Minister in the British Rail workshops debate on 22 March 1983 stated that the Government supported
vigorous and constructive measures by all concerned to promote alternative and durable employment in the areas affected."—[Official Report, 22 March 1983; Vol. 39, c. 31.]
The Horwich workshop is one of those areas. What measures are the Government proposing?
I realise that some of the matters that I have raised may not fall exclusively within the responsibilities of the Minister's Department. Massive closures such as those of the Horwich workshops and others that I have mentioned involve many Departments, including the Departments of Employment, Environment and Industry. As the Department of Employment is a key Department in this, I ask the Minister to raise with other Ministers as a matter of urgency the need for positive action to provide meaningful jobs. Stop-gap measures are not sufficient. Unless real jobs are created, we shall slide into the situation that we have seen in other parts of the country.
It is no use the Secretary of State for Employment telling people to get on their bikes. The shortage of engineers in my area is now so severe that I wonder who will be available even to make the bikes. I hope that the Minister will reply to the specific issues that I have raised in relation to the youth programme, the problems of the long-term unemployed and the ethnic unemployed and the undefined "constructive measures" outlined in the Government's amendment.

The Under-Secretary of State for Employment (Mr. Peter Morrison): I shall not be drawn by the remarks of the hon. Member for Bolton, East (Mr. Young) about my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and the bicycle industry. I am, however, very pleased that the hon. Gentleman has had the good fortune to be able to introduce this debate today.
As the hon. Gentleman is probably aware, I know Bolton quite well as my own constituency of City of Chester is not far down the road. In September last year I visited Bolton. I went round a hydraulic manufacturing business and met the chamber of commerce. As an outsider visiting Bolton, I certainly agree with the hon. Gentleman's views about the reasons for Bolton's prosperity and the get-up-and-go attitude of its people. Having seen the situation for myself, I also realise that unemployment in Bolton is very high and the effect that the recession has had especially on the textile and engineering industries.
Although the hon. Gentleman does not agree with the Government's policies, I hope that he will accept that the Conservative party and the Government regard unemployment as a serious and tragic waste of human resources. We believe that our solution is right, but the Labour party proposes a different solution. We are only too well aware of the misery and hopelessness that unemployment brings to those unfortunate enough to lose their jobs or to be unemployed for any period.
In my view, the current high unemployment in Bolton and throughout the country results mainly from two factors. Here there may be some common ground between the hon. Gentleman and me. First, the world recession and the massive hike in oil prices have affected all Western countries and are bound to affect unemployment levels. Secondly, the hon. Gentleman may also agree that we have suffered more than most from what I describe as chronic lack of competitiveness. In the past, other countries paid more attention to inflation and have now got themselves into a better position to compete in a shrinking market. While they were doing that, for two decades we paid ourselves more and more while producing too little. Therefore, with some obvious exceptions, British industry was failing to produce goods of as high a quality and at as low a price as our competitors.
The Government have reversed that trend. We are creating a climate in which customers can be won back and new markets developed. All the signs are that we are beginning to succeed.
The hon. Gentleman will accept that inflation is falling steeply. It is now at a lower level than it has been for nearly 13 years. We are therefore back on the path to sound money. That is bound to help industry to sell more and to create more jobs. I suspect that the hon. Gentleman will agree that, by and large, there is now what I can only describe as common sense in pay bargaining. Pay settlements are now more than 10 per cent. below the level of settlements of three years ago and people are beginning to understand that the only way in which to secure a rise in living standards and more jobs is to secure improvements in competitiveness.
Productivity has been rising at Japanese rates. It has improved by 20 per cent. since the first quarter of 1981. Moreover, new products are being developed and attitudes at work are changing. We are also succeeding in export

markets. The hon. Gentleman will have seen the CBI's March survey, which shows more optimism than ever since the beginning of the recession.
That is the foundation upon which industry will have to build. I am glad to say that there are some examples of firms in Bolton that are doing just that. For example, RIVA Computer Services, of which the hon. Gentleman probably knows, has recently moved into purpose-built units in the town and expects to increase its staff substantially in the next two years. Columbus Foundries has set up production on the former Platt Saco Lowell site in the town and is recruiting 125 workers locally. Bolton Glynwed Property Developments has begun work on developing a 23-acre site into industrial units. That could create 800 more jobs.
The hon. Gentleman said that the new employers coming into the area are setting up service industries. There is no cause for concern or complaint about' that, as there are bound to be changes in the pattern of our industries. It is likely that fewer people will be employed in heavy industry and more will be employed in light manufacturing and service industries. That is partly an evolutionary trend that we shall have to accept.
The hon. Gentleman also referred to British Aerospace. I am aware of the importance to British Airways Lostock plant of the new anti-radar missile contract, to which the hon. Gentleman referred. My hon. Friend the Minister of State for Defence Procurement has arranged for a full evaluation of the contenders. He will, of course, take account of a wide range of factors, including employment, operational performance, technical merit, cost, availability and cost effectiveness. That evaluation is proceeding according to the timetable that was agreed with the bidders. The Ministry of Defence expects to complete its procedures shortly.
The hon. Gentleman also referred to British Rail Engineering Ltd. I accept that not all news in the area is good and that the forthcoming closure of the Horwich works is a nasty blow. The problem is not that Horwich is inefficient, but that its work load has declined to the point when the plant can no longer be run on a viable basis. Therefore, British Rail must match its capacity to meet the expected work load.
The hon. Gentleman asked for clarification of the statement made by my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Transport on 22 March. What he said was clear. He was making the point that all Government agencies that can help will be working with British Rail, local authorities and others to find new opportunities and jobs. For instance, British Rail Engineering Ltd. has made it clear that it wants to work through the local development trust to create new jobs. It has nominated a director to assist specifically with that task and it is also prepared to provide financial resources.
The hon. Gentleman will be aware that assisted area status has been a matter of contention in Bolton. In response to the Horwich closure, the Government propose to maintain Bolton's assisted area status. Bolton was originally destined to lose its intermediate area status last August but, in response to the temporary but difficult position in the area, my right hon. and hon. Friends in the Department of Industry have decided to reverse that decision. As a result, Bolton remains eligible for many regional incentives.

Mr. David Young: I am not clear what the Minister is saying. Are we to get back our limited assisted area status or is there the possibility of that being raised to full development area status? Obviously it is the latter that I would ask the Minister to press for.

Mr. Morrison: I apologise if I did not make it clear to the hon. Gentleman. I was trying to say that, because of the Horwich closure, which created a nasty and difficult position, my right hon. and hon. Friends in the Department of Industry decided temporarily to reverse their decision to take away intermediate area status from Bolton. As a result, Bolton will have intermediate area status and there will be many regional incentives.
The hon. Gentleman is also concerned about what might happen in the education service in Bolton regarding school meals. As he will be aware, the Government want to see the massive amount of taxpayers' money that is being spent on education better directed towards the classroom. As in anything else, we need to achieve greater efficiency in the provision of school meals, and that could result in job losses.
The hon. Gentleman referred to the problems of the long-term unemployed. I draw his attention to the special employment measures and how they affect Bolton. My right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor announced two particular measures in the Budget that would be of direct help to the categories of people to which the hon. Gentleman referred. For example, the extension of the enterprise allowance scheme, which helps unemployed people to start up in business on their own, was originally introduced as an experiment in five areas.
North-east Lancashire was one such area, not far from the hon. Gentleman's constituency, and it was most successful. From 1 August to the end of March 1984 the scheme will be extended throughout the country. Places for a further 25,000 people will be available, and I have no doubt that, because of the entrepreneurial spirit of the hon. Gentleman's constituents, many will want to take advantage of the scheme. A second measure that will be of direct benefit to the unemployed is the new scheme for part-time job release, which takes effect from 1 October. That should provide part-time job opportunities for up to 40,000 people who are at present unemployed. More than £90 million of taxpayers' money has been set aside over the next two years for these two schemes.
I hope that the hon. Gentleman will understand that the Government are concerned and are setting aside substantial amounts of money to help the very people about whom he was talking. In fact, in Bolton about 2,620 people are already benefiting from the community programme, community industry, the young workers scheme, the temporary short-time working compensation scheme and the full-time job release scheme. Without those programmes, many of his constituents would be unemployed.

South Africa (British Policy)

1 pm

Mr. Ian Lloyd: I notice from the attendance in the House that this will perhaps be a quadrilogue, but I assume that quality will compensate for quantity.
There are five reasons why I have sought to raise these issues and I shall try to put them in what I believe to be their order of importance. First and foremost, if we look at the factors on which the future of the West will depend, we see that there is the current issue of the nuclear balance, because if that is lost, who knows what is lost. Next, there is the cohesion of Western Europe. In my humble opinion, if that cohesion is not maintained our enemies and opponents will once again achieve their objectives, without the need to do very much else.
Southern Africa and the relationship of the West with it I place third in this order of priority. This must be put ahead of the middle east, and I have considered that judgment carefully, because whereas the dependence of the West on oil, though great, will diminish, the dependence of the Western world on the minerals of southern Africa is great and will increase.
Unfortunately, for many reasons, which we understand, this third issue is seldom discussed, but if we lose southern Africa we shall lose the game. The Under-Secretary of State in the United States with responsibility for Africa said in a recent speech that southern Africa was a crucial area for determining the rules of international conduct in the decade ahead. I believe that to be absolutely true.
If we want endorsement from the other side, we need only turn to the late Mr. Brezhnev, who said in Prague not many years ago:
Our intention is to gain control of the two great treasure houses on which the West depends—the energy of the Persian Gulf and the minerals of central and southern Africa.
The second reason for raising this matter is the publication of the United States Senate report—a remarkable document—on the role of the Soviet Union, Cuba and East Germany in fomenting terrorism in southern Africa. I have had the volumes of evidence for some time, but I received the final report from the United States embassy literally this morning.
I share wholly the conclusion of the chairman of that report that this evidence is
at once shocking and familiar"—
familiar to those who have experience of the attempts of Moscow and its agents to infiltrate and manipulate the so-called national liberation movements in south-east Asia, Latin America and Africa, and shocking to all who prize liberty, democratic values and human rights. The evidence is overwhelming and powerful, and anyone who chooses to comment on this part of the world or these problems should not do so before he has read, quoted and understood what has been said.
I put merely one major conclusion of the report before the House:
The evidence received by the subcommittee is deeply disturbing. It suggests strongly that the original purposes of the ANC and SWAPO have been subverted, and that the Soviets and their allies have achieved alarmingly effective control over them. The demonstrated activities of these organisations, moreover, cannot easily be reconciled with the goal of liberation or the promotion of freedom. The evidence has thus served to illustrate once again the Soviet Union's support for terrorism under the


guise of aiding struggles for national liberation. It is past time to bring these facts to the attention of our policymakers, the American people, and the world at large.
I share that judgment and shall do my best to bring it to the attention of the British people.
My third reason for raising this issue is the publication of the Labour party's policy proposals on southern Africa. I have read them carefully, and they are unconvincing, prejudiced, unrealistic, dangerous and damaging to the United Kingdom. Indeed, had Mr. Andropov himself been asked to draft a document that was likely to achieve the purposes of his country in southern Africa, he could not have done better.
My fourth reason for raising this subject is the Gleneagles agreement. This issue arouses great controversy in the House, and unfortunately it has not been debated at length. It raises issues that are fundamental to the future of the Commonwealth and which, in my humble judgment, should be discussed at greater length than is possible today. The Commonwealth was, like the League of Nations before it, the brainchild—which is quickly and easily forgotten today—of General Smuts. I should like to think that had he been standing where I am today and in a position to make comments, they would have been devastating on the impact and philosophy of the Gleneagles agreement in relation to the whole philosophy and purpose of the Commonwealth.
My fifth and final reason is personal. I recently had an opportunity to visit South Africa again after many years. My visit demonstrated to me the extent of the gulf between the perception of reality and the reality in that part of the world. Unfortunately, time does not permit me to give specific and interesting examples. However, I have sent many of them to my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary and as a result we have had some very interesting correspondence.
I am encouraged by several of the Foreign Secretary's conclusions. In his letter to me of 19 January 1983 he wrote:
The Government's policy towards South Africa is based on its perception of our very real interest in encouraging peaceful change there, both for its own sake and to safeguard our and wider western interests.
I wholly endorse that.
The policy is also derived from I believe a full and proper appreciation of the complexities of South African society and of the political and economic currents now flowing through it.
That, too, is excellent. However, whether it is full enough may be another question. Later, he wrote:
But I must note that the current process of constitutional reform does not at present offer a role for the largest population group in South Africa.
Following an exchange on that subject, the Foreign Secretary wrote a subsequent letter, which concluded as follows:
I cannot help reflecting that the many millions of black people in South Africa have not been asked for their views on how they would like to be governed nor been given any significant role in determining the decisions arrived at by the South African Government. That is the nub of the issue.
It is certainly a nub of a very important issue, but of course there are many other nubs. When I read that, one of my immediate thoughts was that Great Britain, the home of democracy, took approximately one century to move from the democracy of early Victorian England—extremely limited as it was—to the universal suffrage of today. In

addition, we did not have to deal with any issue of race or with any of the other great complications that apply to South Africa.
I come to some of the major policy considerations to which I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will address himself. The United States Senate report produces disturbing evidence of the Soviet domination of national liberation movements in southern Africa. Evidence was presented to the United States Senate on the pre-positioning of heavy weapons by the Soviets and their allies in southern Africa. The following figures were given: 191 Migs, 663 heavy tanks, 734 armoured cars, 878 armoured personnel carriers and 932 pieces of medium artillery. We know that when the operation known as Protea was launched and successfully carried out, about 4,000 tonnes of arms were captured, including 34 T34 tanks and Sam 7 missiles.
We know from evidence given by Mr. Chester Crocker that SWAPO has received 90 per cent. of its military support and 60 per cent. of its overall support from the Communist world. The House should recognise and take note of that.
With regard to diplomatic support, the report reaches a most significant conclusion. It is that the Soviet outposts in southern Africa in the 1980s and the African bureaucracies in Moscow are now manned by experienced specialists of a calibre that did not even exist during Russia's first major foray into Africa 20 years ago. I should like to know whether the Minister thinks that we should take the most serious note of that conclusion.
The United Nations' aid to guerrilla movements, as we know, is not authorised by the United Nations charter. Yet, according to evidence presented to the Senate Committee, $9 million has been allocated by the United Nations to the African National Congress and the Pan-African Congress, and since 1975 $110 million of United Nations funds has been allocated to national liberation movements. It is interesting that it is never allocated to pro-Western national liberation movements.
Between 1977 and 1981, $40 million of United Nations money was allocated direct to SWAPO, and the evidence is contained in the report to which I have referred. UNIDO and UNCTAD—United Nations organisations, one would have thought, with no need in any sense whatever to demonstrate support in this way—have put forward funding proposals for $17 million to SWAPO and other national liberation movements.
The United Nations has granted SWAPO permanent observer status. It has granted SWAPO the right to use the United Nations propaganda machine. Worst of all, it has conferred on SWAPO and others international political legitimacy which I doubt very much whether any of those organisations deserve.
Within the last 18 months the United States Congress has cut off $900,000 from its funding of the United Nations Vote. It has also called for a full investigation of the allocation of United Nations funds to organisations such as I have mentioned. I have no evidence that we necessarily support that line of action or that, having discovered what is taking place, we intend to withdraw our funds. I ask the Minister whether we intend to fund further support to the United Nations for the use of terrorist movements and, if so, why.
With regard to the supply of arms to the so-called frontline states, those are mostly bankrupt, mostly Marxist, mostly anti-Western, and anti-capitalist. Why are we


supplying them? Who is paying, since they are bankrupt? Have we assessed the probable direction of the use of the major weapon systems that they are seeking to acquire? Finally, have we almost gone out of our minds?
With regard to the Gleneagles agreement, why do we not recognise progress in South Africa? What standing have South Africa's principal critics? I have the benefit of the Freedom House analysis of the so-called front-line states. They are rated on a scale from 1 to 7, 1 being a perfectly free society, such as the United States, Norway or the United Kingdom, and 7 being countries such as Cambodia or the USSR. None of the front-line states scores 1, one of them scores 2, and three of them score less than Cambodia or the USSR. By what right do countries with such records come to the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' conference and lay down criteria by which sporting relations with South Africa should be judged?
With regard to destabilisation, who is destabilising whom in South Africa? Which power, in obvious terms of political advantage, has the greater interest in the destabilisation of southern Africa—South Africa or the Soviet Union? Common sense alone does not dictate the answer. Do the Government believe that the Soviet's thrust in southern Africa, which is so serious, and which is documented dramatically in the report, would be abandoned if South Africa, tomorrow, were to introduce a system that satisfied all Western democratic criteria? If the Government believe that, they will believe anything. Has the West time to organise the defence of this vital part of the Western world? Will we start now to counter the massive propaganda campaign documented so fully in this report, which has caused such damage, not just to our interests, but to our judgment?
Will we put Gleneagles on the table at the earliest opportunity so that it can be discussed, and will we discuss it in the House? Will we encourage success as well as criticise failure in South Africa? I do not ask for any condonation of failure. Where there is failure, that is it. It is not redeemed by pointing to failures elsewhere. That South Africa is the only country whose political balance sheet is never given a credit column is something that should offend every sense of equity in a democratic society. Here, surely, is the classic illustration of the parable of the mote and the beam.
I shall conclude by quoting from evidence given a few months ago by a defected Mozambique Mig pilot who trained in the Soviet Union, flew in Mozambique and finally had enough. He said to the United States Senate Committee, and it is the appeal upon which I should like to end:
Therefore, I appeal to those who have a say and an active role in international affairs, particularly those pertaining to the free world, to take a more realistic look at Africa and not to place Africans in general in specific categories without being fully aware of what is in fact taking place on our continent. Foreign forces totally alien to us are taking over our states and reducing us to a miserable state. So miserable is the situation in black Africa that developed countries should shudder at this sight.
I believe that that is the fairest comment that anyone can make of the position north of the Limpopo. These issues are of such fundamental importance that it is a great pity that we discuss them so seldom and that when we do we have such limited opportunities for dialogue across the Floor.

The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr. Cranley Onslow): I welcome this opportunity to discuss the important subject of British policy towards southern Africa. I echo the closing remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Havant and Waterloo (Mr. Lloyd). It is neither his nor my fault that there are so few of us here today or that we have so little lime for debate. I am grateful for the first chance that I have had since taking on my present responsibility nearly a year ago to talk to the House on this important subject. I shall respond, as far as I can, to the speech that my hon. Friend has made in as constructive a way as he opened the argument.
Southern Africa is a region with which we as a country have deep-rooted historical connections. Our links go back a long way and remain close and strong through settlement, trade, investment, aid and many varied personal and individual bonds. I welcome the fact that many countries in the region are members of the Commonwealth, and we should not undervalue their contribution.
I cannot debate now whether my hon. Friend is right in his assessment that the region is more important than the middle east. Certainly it is an important part of the world and we have contributions to make there. We properly took on, and successfully discharged, the responsibility for bringing Zimbabwe to independence, and it is right that we should be closely involved in the search for a settlement in Namibia. Many countries in the region look first to us for help and advice and many people in this country and elsewhere regard us as having a special role to play in southern Africa.
I assure my hon. Friend that I share his anxiety about the reports that he quoted of Soviet or Soviet bloc involvement in, if not domination of, independence movements in Africa and elsewhere. I am not sure that that is a new situation. I remember a pamphlet produced by, I think, the Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies nearly 30 years ago entitled "Defence and the Cold War", which defined Soviet objectives as being all mischiefs short of war. There is scope for the Soviets to make mischief in southern Africa, and it is in the nature of things that they should seek to take advantage of the situation.
That makes it all the more important that our policies and responses should be right and related to the prevailing circumstances. With respect to my hon. Friend, I am not sure that he covered all the considerations.
Southern Africa is an important part of the world in which we have substantial interests. The commercial figures speak for themselves. South Africa is our twelfth largest export market and took nearly £1,200 million of our exports in 1981. About 7 per cent. of our overseas investment is in South Africa. Of course, trade is not the only consideration; there are strategic considerations. The importance of the Cape route is well known, as is the importance of the mineral resources in southern Africa to which my hon. Friend referred. There are also family ties.
However, we cannot consider those aspects in isolation and ignore the realities of international politics. There is no getting away from the fact that South Africa's racial policies are a continuing barrier to a closer relationship.


We know how complex they are, but the House knows the Government's view on apartheid. It was expressed by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister in July 1979:
The policy of apartheid, with its emphasis on separating peoples rather than bringing them together, and all the harshness required to impose it on the South African population is wholly unacceptable."—[Official Report, 25 July 1979; Vol. 971, c. 629.]
I wonder whether my hon. Friend gave all the weight that he would have liked to give to that factor. We cannot escape it. Apartheid is deeply morally repugnant to many people in this country and throughout the world. We must accept that fact and I do not take a different view about its moral repugnance.

Mr. Ian Lloyd: Does my hon. Friend agree that in the past two or three years there has been a considerable, contrived and perhaps tortuous attempt to retreat from apartheid? I believe that the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary of South Africa have condemned apartheid and, although condemnation is not the same as abolishing the system, should not we encourage the process of retreat from a doctrine which I also wholly deplore?

Mr. Onslow: We should certainly do that. It is one of the objectives of our policy, and I shall deal later with how we should assess the development of the internal politics of South Africa. I am glad to have my hon. Friend's agreement to the proposition that we must balance the factors.
We must also take account of the future. Only last week President Kaunda of Zambia forecast an explosion of violence in South Africa within the next four years that, he claimed, would make the French revolution seem like a children's Sunday morning picnic. We have to prove President Kaunda wrong. I am sure that he has no wish to see it happen. I hope and believe that the Government of South Africa have no wish to see it happen. Part of our policy objective has to be to try to move events forward in a way which makes it unthinkable that this should happen.
It is not for us to dictate to the Government of South Africa how they should resolve all their difficulties by internal political change. It must be for the South African people and for their Government. I am not pretending that I can see any quick or easy solutions to the problems. But, as my hon. Friend said, South Africa is not a static country. The political situation is a developing one, as is the economic situation. Observers agree that economic growth over recent years has brought great social changes. The question is whether it has also brought the necessary political changes. It cannot be said that it has brought the political rights to which the black community aspires and is entitled to aspire.
There have been proposals for constitutional change which the South African Government have put forward. These affect the Indian and coloured communities especially. I do not discount them, but the standard by which these proposals must be judged is the extent to which they meet the wishes of the people of South Africa as a whole. So I cannot give them an unqualified welcome.
I have to choose my words with care born of experience, because I know how quick some journalists in South Africa are to quote selectively or misleadingly. My hon. Friend understands that.
We cannot avoid noting that the process of constitutional reform does not at present offer any role for the largest population group in South Africa, the black community. In that situation, the House will know that we feel it right to apply certain limitations to our contacts with South Africa, as do a great many other countries. We are not alone in our attitude. Sporting contacts was one aspect mentioned by my hon. Friend, and I emphasise our continuing support for the Gleneagles agreement. My hon. Friend may feel that the House should debate it. It is a subject which may be considered in other fora in the country in coming months. But the Government believe that it is the right policy to adopt, just as we believe that it is right to restrict our nuclear and military collaboration with South Africa in the ways with which my hon. Friend will be familiar. As I have said, this is also the view of the international community.
We also believe that the best way to promote change in South Africa is by maintaining and fostering our other existing links. Our commercial interests with that country play a role here. As the House knows, the Government encourage British companies to comply fully with the European Community code of conduct which lays stress on improving the wage levels and training of black employees and especially on the development of representational rights for black workers through organisations of their own choice. We believe that the code has been a successful instrument in the improvement of working conditions for black employees of British companies in Africa, and I am glad to be able to tell my hon. Friend that my hon. and learned Friend the Minister for Trade will be answering a parliamentary question on that subject today so that there is an up-to-date statement available to the House of the way in which the Government see the code working.
I am conscious that in the time available I can cover very little of what is a very large subject. However, I wish to say a little about Zimbabwe, if my hon. Friend will allow me. It is an important part of southern Africa, and we cannot ignore it. We have been greatly concerned about the reports of excesses committed by the Fifth Brigade of the Zimbabwe army in Matabeleland, and the Government of Zimbabwe are well aware of our concern.
The Zimbabwe Government have a serious security problem. When I was in Harare in January, I heard about it, about the kidnappings of tourists, about the attacks on whites and blacks, about the ambushing of white farmers and their black employees and about the general state of dissidence which had built up in Matabeleland and which the Government could not ignore.
Exactly what has happened is still not clear, but the Government welcome the assurance which President Mugabe has given the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace that there will be an investigation into reported cases of abuse on the part of the army.
I should have liked to discuss other aspects of southern Africa. I am conscious that I have not dealt with Namibia. That is an important issue. We are doing our utmost to help events forward. The momentum is slow, but I believe that progress can be made and that there is still a prospect of a peaceful solution to that difficult and long-standing problem. We seek a peaceful evolution. Our policy towards South Africa and the rest of southern Africa involves peaceful settlements and the use of peaceful


means to resolve the difficult problems. In that I am sure that our policy is right, and I hope that my hon. Friend will give it his full support.

Mr. B. P. Chandarana

Mr. Clive Soley: I am grateful for the opportunity to put the case for Mr. B. P. Chandarana to join his family here. It is becoming increasingly, and perhaps sadly, necessary to do that in view of the reputation that the United Kingdom is gaining in relation to immigration and political asylum as a result of recent events. I am glad that I am able to put a specific case before the House. I ask the Minister to keep a totally open mind about the case, which has a long and complex history, until he has heard my remarks.
Before I explain the details of the case, I want to say a little about the philosophy involved. I hope that the Minister will view the case in the context of the letter and the spirit of both the United Nations declaration on human rights and the Helsinki final act, because they were undertaken in great seriousness by successive Governments and both say a great deal about the family.
The United Nations declaration states:
The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.
The Helsinki final act states:
The participating States will deal in a positive and humanitarian spirit with the applications of persons who wish to be reunited with members of their family … They will deal with applications in this field as expeditiously as possible.
I want to put as forcibly as I can the case that it is unacceptable to keep one son away from the rest of his family. That is what has resulted from the decisions so far. This afternoon the Minister, on the Floor of the House, has the opportunity to put that right and to allow the one son who is not allowed to live with his family to join his family in the United Kingdom. do not think that that is asking too much of liberal and humane attitudes towards the problem.
Mr. and Mrs. Chandarana arrived here on a quota voucher for settlement in August 1980 with their six children. One son, Bharatkumar, was not allowed to come and is still in Tanzania. He was refused entry clearance by the British high commission on 22 July 1980.
Mr. Chandarana senior applied for a quota voucher in 1972 in Dar-es-Salaam. He named all his dependants. There is no real doubt about the issue. Both Mr. and Mrs. Chandarana's passports, which are endorsed by the entry clearance officer, state:
Entry clearance applied for. Signed: R. Shaw, Dar-es-Salaam 22 June 1972.
In the front of both passports is the list of the family names, including that of the son, Bharatkumar.
The Home Office and the British high commission have not denied that, but say that there is no evidence of application. That is ambiguous. An examination of the letters between various hon. Members and Ministers reveal a slightly ambiguous attitude by the Government.
A letter dated 23 June 1981 from the then Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs states:
They thus considered the voucher application he lodged in 1972 to have lapsed and invited him"—
I emphasise that—
to submit a fresh one when he wrote to them on 10 October 1979.
A second letter from the predecessor of the present Minister of State, Home Office, dated 2 June 1981, states:
I cannot comment on Mr. Martin's insistence"——


Mr. Martin of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants—
that Mr. Chandarana did pursue his 1972 entry certificate application other than to say that the records of the British High Commission in Dar-es-Salaam do not show that application was either granted or refused. Therefore, as I said in my last letter, the application was apparently not pursued as it never seemed to be brought to a conclusion and was regarded by the entry clearance officer as lapsed.
The key to this issue revolves round the fact that no one denies that Mr. Chandarana applied in 1972. While there is some ambiguity about the Government's position on this matter, no one has said, "We do not believe that he applied." If he had applied—we should take his word for this, as there is no evidence to the contrary—we would not be in this position today. These problems would not have developed but for the intervening years. No one can seriously argue that the boy, who was then 16 or 17 years old, would not have been seen as a dependent son of the family and not been admitted.
The core of my appeal to the Minister today is that he should at least recognise that there is some ambiguity in this matter—I suggest that there is more than that—and considerable evidence to suggest that Mr. Chandarana's version of events in 1972 is correct. If so, we should give the benefit of the doubt to Mr. Chandarana and his family and recognise that we would have admitted the son at that stage. That is extremely important.
No one doubts that Mr. Bharatkumar Chandarana was dependent at that time. Ministers at the Home Office have seen the secondary school document, dated 16 March 1982, from the Tabora school. They have also seen the document from the Gujarati higher secondary school in India dated 27 July 1982. The letter from the Minister's predecessor, dated 30 January 1981, states:
Although Mr. Chandarana had originally applied to come to this country in 1972, this application was aparently not pursued and it was not until 6 November 1979 that he applied for, and subsequently obtained, his special voucher.
So it is recognised that the child was dependent at that time.
On 27 February 1980 and on 7 March 1980, Mr. and Mrs. Chandarana and four of their children were given entry clearance, but two other children were refused. But on 1 July 1980 those two children were also given entry clearance. It says something about the way we handle these matters, particularly the way we handled them at that time, that we allowed more than two months to elapse before we agreed to let in another two children of the family. There is something dreadful about playing what is to all intents and purposes a cat and mouse game with members of a family to see whether they can come as a family. We are discussing here the children of the parents, not an extended family.
Mr. Chandarana, when asked about Bharatkumar, said initially that he was in Tabora. That was not correct. Later, on 1 Junly 1980, he said the Bharatkumar was in India and due back in Tabora at any time. Mr. Chandarana then flew to India to bring Bharatkumar back. In explaining that, it is important to understand that in Tanzania in 1971 the Government decided that students could no longer take foreign school certificates. As is well known, the eldest son in Asian communities holds an important position, and the education of that son is considered to be important. In that respect Mr. Chandarana saw the opportunity for education in India and sent his son there for that reason.
The Minister will recognise that there is considerable evidence of education in India. It is conceded—Mr. and Mrs. Chandarana would be the first to concede it—that the studies were not successful. Mr. Bharatkumar Chandarana was perhaps not the best of students, but, having said that, that is no reason to deny him the right to join his family in this country. It is not sufficient for the Home Office to assume that, because of contradictory answers, he was not a student, but was in some way supporting himself and wholly independent. The Home Office can offer no evidence to suggest that Bharatkumar was independent. However, there is evidence that he was dependent on Mr. Chandarana.
As Bharatkumar was in India, he would have needed a work permit to work there. The Minister will know—indeed, one of his colleagues acknowledged it in a letter—that currency regulations and the uncertainty of the position in Tanzania was likely to lead people into difficulties in financing such education. They were faced either with not letting their children be educated or with moving them outside the country and in some way trying to get around the currency restrictions. That is what happened. It may not be desirable, nor is it good, but the family were trying to improve themselves while trying to stay together. Therefore, their actions were not unreasonable, considering the circumstances. It is unreasonable to say that, because there is doubt whether the boy was dependent while he was in India, he should not be allowed to join his family.
A letter from the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs on 14 May 1981 stated that the entry clearance officer had refused the application because he was not satisfied that Bharatkumar
had remained fully dependent upon his father as claimed.
It is on such a statement that the Government shamefully justify a breach of the Helsinki final act. We are actually saying that a child cannot join his family because they cannot prove that the child was dependent on them. In the circumstances that I have described—the problem of education, the position of the eldest son in the family and the currency regulations—it is unreasonable to reach a decision that does not benefit the family and recognise the family's central role in society. That point is especially relevant in view of the Prime Minister's recent comments, and those of the Government, about the importance of the family unit.
The Minister has claimed that Mr. Chandarana could have pursued his application after 1972 and before 1979. That is less than fair, given the state of affairs in Tanzania and the British high commission at that time. Mr. Chandarana, who was living in Tabora, 550 miles from Dar-es-Salaam, visited the British high commission from time to time and specifically on 18 August 1975 and in January 1976 when he renewed his own and his wife's passports, respectively.
The general policy of British high commissions in east Africa at that time—I think that it is still the same today—was to issue a standard form which, in effect, said "Do not call us; we will call you." On several occasions, although notes were taken of Mr. Chandarana's comments, he was told, "Your application is in and there is no more for you to do at this stage." Although those are verbal records, there has been no denial from either the British high commission or the Home Office that Mr. Chandarana applied in 1972 or that he made verbal inquiries.
To deny a family the right to live together simply on the basis of uncertainties is unacceptable. There is strong evidence, even in the letters from Ministers that I have quoted, that the 1972 application was made. It is wrong to assume that Mr. Chandarana must produce some written proof of his application and the follow-up to it. Surely the emphasis should be the other way round—either the British high commission or the Home Office should produce proof to the contrary. If they are unable to do so, they should allow that one remaining child to rejoin his family.
If the Minister takes the view that the application was made in 1972—as I think he must, in view of the statements in his colleagues' letters acknowledging that—it is surely unreasonable to assume that a boy of 16 or 17 years of age was not to be included in the application to come and live with the family in the United Kingdom, bearing in mind the role of the only son in the Asian family structure.
A further injustice arises in that Mr. Chandarana was interviewed and offered a voucher on 8 November 1979. Bharatkumar was still under the age of 25, his date of birth being 2 January 1955. It is normal practice to admit unmarried and dependent children. Not to do so simply because Bharatkumar was in India must be an excessively harsh and inflexible judgment. If he had been available for work, it is highly likely that he would have been working for his father in Tanzania, because again that is the normal role in the family. The blocking of educational opportunity for Asian children in Tanzania, combined with the problems of currency restrictions, complicated the problem and enabled the Home Office to doubt the original intentions of the family to remain united.
***
The Home Office asked why Bharatkumar did not appeal against the entry commissioner's refusal and go to the British high commission in India. First—and this is important—he was advised not to appeal by the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, as there was no provision for admission within the immigration rules for a son over 18. We have that in writing from the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants. We can argue whether that was good or bad advice, but, whichever it is, the blame can hardly be put on Mr. Chandarana for refusing to follow the advice of such a reputable and competent body.
Secondly, Bharatkumar could not purchase an airline ticket to the United Kingdom in India because of the currency regulations in Tanzania. That is why he was brought back to Tanzania. One sees the Catch 22 situation. Had he purchased the ticket himself in India, it would be obvious that either he had got round the currency restrictions or that he was independent. On the other hand, as the Government have said, he could have applied, but the evidence is that Mr. Chandarana had to go to India to get him because he was still supporting him. Mr. Chandarana and his family argue strongly—I think, convincingly—that the family were supporting their son in India. The evidence supports that view, and certainly there is no contrary evidence to that. Again, I ask the House to remember that on that assumption we are dividing a family.
Letters between the son and father and the rest of the family have been lost or destroyed. Again, it can be said, "Is that not proof of lack of a link with the family?" I do not think so. In view of the fact, again acknowledged by Ministers, that there were difficulties about currency

regulations and people trying to get round them, it is not surprising that letters were destroyed. The circumstances in east Africa in the early 1970s made it unlikely that people would keep letters implying the evasion of currency regulations. It would be suicidal to do that.
The British high commission was at fault, first, in failing to respond appropriately to Mr. Chandarana's verbal inquiries. Notes were made, but no action was taken. Secondly, it was wrong in advising him to submit a fresh application for a voucher instead of suggesting that he should restate his original 1972 application. As the Minister will know, some people in his Department consider that he should have acted in that way. However, the letter is very clear. It says that he was advised to re-apply. It does not say that he was advised to restate his claim. Thirdly, in spending the time from February 1982 to November 1983 writing to an address that it knew since July 1980 was no longer appropriate is a fault on the part of the British high commission, and one that cannot easily be overlooked. There is evidence of delay, and so on.
I ask the Minister to look deeply into his own heart on this issue. I know that he is concerned about these matters. I ask him to recognise that the family is divided. I ask him also to think of the United Kingdom's reputation, particularly in the light of the Helsinki final act, the United Nations declaration on human rights and pronouncements by the Prime Minister and the Government on the importance of the role of the family.

The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. David Waddington): This case has been given the most anxious and careful consideration by the Home Office. My predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Raison), looked at it anxiously. He leant over backwards to help the applicant, giving him a chance to establish his entitlement, although strictly his case came without the rules. Therefore, for two years the matter has been looked at regularly by Ministers in the Home Office. I know that the decision must be disappointing to Mr. Chandarana. I am afraid that it is in the nature of our job of maintaining strict but fair immigration control that many are disappointed. I am sorry, but I still do not feel that we are able to find in Mr. Chandarana's favour.
The case has a long history and I apologise for going over some of it again. In 1972, Mr. Chandarana's father applied to the British high commission in Dar-es-Salaam for a special voucher for himself, his wife and their seven children, including Bharatkumar, to come to this country for settlement. Mr. Chandarana says that he received an acknowledgement of the application, but nothing further. He says that he inquired into the position on many occasions over the next few years, but his inquiries elicited no response. Not altogether surprisingly, the high commission case papers for 1972 have been destroyed, but I am advised that there is no record of inquiries by Mr. Chandarana after 1972 in spite of the fact that the outcome of inquiries about voucher applications normally is recorded.
In October 1979, Mr. Chandarana wrote to the high commission and he was advised to make a further application, which he did in November 1979. The whole family was then interviewed except for Bharatkumar, who, his father said, was studying and working in the family shop in Tanzania. The initial result of these applications was that the father, mother and four children


were granted clearance to travel to the United Kingdom and two children's applications were refused because they were over the age of 18.
Mr. Chandarana was advised that Bharatkumar's application should not be determined until Bharatkumar had been interviewed and it was only after this had been made clear that Mr. Chandarana admitted that he had been entirely untruthful and said that Bharatkumar was not working in the family shop, but was in India. The entry clearance officer suggested that Bharatkumar be interviewed in India, but this suggestion was apparently not acceptable and it was eight months later, in July 1980, that Bharatkumar attended for interview in Dar-es-Salaam. By this time, Mr. Chandarana senior had persuaded the entry clearance officer that the two children whose applications for entry clearance had been previously refused were dependent on him, and they had been granted entry certificates for settlement here.
At the interview in Dar-es-Salaam, Bharatkumar, who was by then 25, said that he had gone to India in 1973 and had remained there until a few days previously. He said that he had lived in Bombay as a paying guest, that he had been studying and that his father had been supporting him. There was no evidence of this and the entry clearance officer refused the application on 22 July 1980. No appeal against this decision was made. It was then that the case was taken up, first by my hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea (Mr. Scott) and then by the hon. Member for Hammersmith, North (Mr. Soley).
There are a number of points about this case that seem to me to be rather unfortunate. The first is that Mr. Chandarana senior should have tried to misrepresent his son's position. To say that Bharatkumar was working in the family shop in Tanzania when he had been in India for seven years was an extraordinary statement to make, and I am bound to say that it must reflect badly on the credibility of someone who is claiming a discretionary benefit for his son. The second point is that when the entry clearance officer suggested that Bharatkumar be interviewed in India, the offer was turned down and the family decided to wait another eight months before bringing Bharatkumar back to Tanzania for an interview. That does not seem like the picture of a family desperately anxious to be reunited and to proceed to a new life in the United Kingdom; and quite clearly one is bound to wonder why Mr. Chandarana was so anxious that his son should not be interviewed in India. Was it perhaps that an entry clearance officer in India might discover some information about Bharatkumar which might be fatal to his application? Anyhow, the upshot was that in August 1980 Mr. Chandarana and his family, apart from Bharatkumar, travelled to England.
Perhaps this is a convenient moment to consider the provisions of the immigration rules. In this instance those contained in HC 79 are the relevant ones. The rules provide that generally children aged 18 or over must qualify for admission in their own right but that in certain circumstances an unmarried and fully dependent son under 21 who formed part of the family unit overseas may be admitted if the whole family are being admitted for settlement. Bharatkumar was 25 when a decision was taken in his case and he clearly does not qualify under this rule.
There is also a provision in the rules allowing distressed relatives to come here for settlement, but to qualify as a distressed relative the person must be isolated—that is, living alone with no relatives in his own country to turn to—and distressed, that is, suffering a standard of living substantially below that of his own country. This concession, however, should not be extended to people below the age of 65 save in the most exceptional compassionate circumstances. Our information is that Bharatkumar lives with an uncle on whom he is dependent, so he clearly cannot qualify for entry under that head.
That leaves only the possibility of exercising the Home Secretary's discretion. As is fairly commonly known, we give sympathetic consideration to children aged 18 to 25 who are unmarried and fully dependent on a person who is granted a special voucher. Bharatkumar was aged 24 when his father's successful application was lodged and 25 when the decision was refused but the crucial consideration in the case is that of dependency. The hon. Gentleman discussed this point at length with my predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury. The hon. Gentleman assured my right hon. Friend that Bharatkumar had been a student dependent on his father ever since 1972. My right hon. Friend—generously, I would say—told the hon. Member that if satisfactory documentary evidence of Bharatkumar's student status for the period from 1972 to 1980 were forthcoming, the matter might be resolved. The hon. Gentleman subsequently produced two documents dated July 1972 relating to secondary schooling in India, one receipt for fees paid to the Nancy college, Bombay, in 1973, another receipt from the same college in 1980 and a certificate of graduation in 1980.
That was hardly conclusive proof of Bharatkumar's student status from 1972 to 1980. In an effort to be helpful, it was decided to make independent inquiries of the college and then to interveiw Bharatkumar. Unfortunately, it took some months to trace Bharatkumar, who had changed his address, but he was seen in Dar-es-Salaam on 30 November 1982. He confirmed that he was in India from 1972 to 1980. He said that he was undergoing secondary education at Indore high school from 1972 to 1976 and then embarked on a computer course at the Nancy degree college until 1980. Our inquiries of Nancy degree college, however, purported to show that he was studying at the college from 1973 to 1980, first on a diploma course in commerce and then on a computer course. We thought it only fair and proper to give Bharatkumar the opportunity to explain these discrepancies and he was interviewed again. He confirmed everything that he had said in November 1982 and firmly denied ever undertaking a commerce course, as Nancy college said that he had.
In those circumstances, I wrote to the hon. Gentleman on 31 January 1983 declining to change our previous decision. I cannot see how I could have done otherwise. The hon. Gentleman provided documentary evidence to back up the case put forward by Bharatkumar who then proceeded to dissociate himself entirely from it.
Almost immediately afterwards, however, we received communications from Bharatkumar in which he changed his story. He now says that he studied at the Nancy degree college from 1973. He explained that his confusion was caused by two and a half years unbearable separation from his family. I am afraid that I cannot concede the case on the basis of such a statement. Bharatkumar was given every opportunity to collect his thoughts. Evidently the


past two and a half years separation has had a much greater effect on him than the previous eight years separation, and I am sorry for that. At the end of the day, however, I have to decide whether it is right to admit for settlement a 28-year-old man who has lived with his immediate family for only about one month during the past 11 years. He has not demonstrated his dependence on his father throughout that period, and I am afraid that he must look to his own country for his future.
I know from the hon. Gentleman's letter to me of 7 March that he feels strongly that delays by the high commission in Dar-es-Salaam have prejudiced Bharatkumar's case and I can only say that I would have been prepared to give way had I been able to satisfy myself of his dependence on his father. Mr. Chandarana has asked to have a personal interview with me about his son's case, but the House of Commons has now been apprised of his son's case and I do not think that much would be achieved by such a meeting. I am conscious that I have not yet replied to the hon. Gentleman's letter of 7 March, but I shall do so as soon as possible.
No impartial person could say that the handling of this case evidences a harsh attitude by the Home Office. Indeed, my predecessor leant over backwards to help. The United Nations declaration that the hon. Gentleman referred to does not mean that countries are not entitled to have immigration laws. Britain entered a reservation to make that abundantly plain.

Mr. Stancu Papasoiu (Deportation)

2 pm

Sir Bernard Braine: I am grateful for the opportunity to raise a disturbing case of a young Romanian mechanic, Mr. Stancu Papasoiu, who entered Britain illegally on or about 15/16 April last year and was deported on 16 March-11 months later. I do so for two reasons. The first is that Mr. Papasoiu's case seems to have been handled from the start—long before my hon. and learned Friend the Minister of State had anything to do with it—in a singularly inept and unfeeling way for which no adequate explanation has so far been given My second reason is that what has happened may have serious implications for other applicants for asylum which must be grasped now if Britain's hitherto high reputation for fair play is not to suffer.
The issue was raised earlier this week in another place in a moving speech by my noble Friend Lord Bethell'. The Minister who replied left a number of important questions unanswered and therefore strengthened the view that many of us hold that not only had the case been mishandled but there is something gravely wrong with Home Office procedures.
I shall set out first the facts about which there appears to be no dispute. Mr. Papasoiu arrived in Britain on 15/16 April. He had no relatives or friends here who could provide shelter. He could not speak a word of English. He had hitch-hiked to London because he thought, quite naturally, that this was the place where he would be able to apply for asylum. On arrival, Mr. Papasoiu went to Limehouse police station to explain his case. Three times he was asked to leave because no one understood him and, on the fourth, an Italian interpreter was called in. Although there are links between the Italian and Romanian languages, Mr. Papasoiu does not speak Italian. The following day he was interviewed in the presence of an immigration officer and the same Italian-speaking interpreter. It was on the strength of their conclusions that the police arrested him as an illegal immigrant.
My noble Friend Lord Elton did not mention that in the debate in the other place. Perhaps no one had told him, or he did not think it important. Instead he claimed that the first substantive interview with a Romanian interpreter took place at the police station on 21 April. Mr. Papasoiu was then sent to the Ashford remand centre where he was held for eight months. For the first four months, he was effectively cut off from the outside world. No contact was made by the Home Office with the British Romanian Association, which, I suppose, is the principal Romanian agency here, and it was not until August that the London office of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees was asked to make inquiries about the possibility of Mr. Papasoiu being accepted by France which was one of the countries through which he said that he had passed on his journey from Romania to Britain.
At least three more months were to pass before the Home Office was told that the French authorities had no record of Mr. Papasoiu entering of leaving their country—hardly surprising because he travelled in lorries, making his way through that country illegally in order to arrive here.
The British Romanian Society learnt of the unhappy Mr. Papasoiu only by accident. A Mr. Horia Georgescu was telephoned by a Home Office official on 25 August


about the case of another Romanian who had entered the country illegally. I have a record of that conversation. The official asked why the association was doing nothing about Mr. Papasoiu. Mr. Georgescu replied that that was the first that the association had heard of him. The association then tried to persuade the Home Office to let Mr. Papasoiu stay for a limited period of six months—a concession given to refugees from Poland to enable them to apply for immigration to a third country. It was told that there were no grounds for letting him stay.
The association then approached me on 18 November and asked me to intervene. I wrote to my right hon. Friend the then Minister of State, Home Office asking him to heed the association's plea and to delay deportation proceedings. What was needed was a breathing space. I was not seeking to weaken our procedures for dealing with illegal immigrants. At that time I was completely unaware how unsatisfactory those procedures were.
On the day that letter was received Mr. Papasoiu went on hunger strike. That lasted four and a half days. On 26 November he was visited by two members of the association, who substantially believed his story of attempted flight from Romania followed by imprisonment until he finally made his successful escape and came here. Up to that point it had been the Home Office's contention that Mr. Papasoiu had not told a consistent story about his attempted escapes from Romania or about his motivation for coming here. Throughout, the Home Office's view has been that his story was confused and inconsistent.
On 10 February my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Clitheroe (Mr. Waddington) wrote to me as follows:
Eastern European countries, among others, have laws which make it an offence for their nationals to leave their own country without authority and to remain abroad beyond the validity of exit permits issued to them before departure which specify the length of time they may remain abroad. Such laws are in my view deplorable but they do not in themselves constitute persecution.
Anyone who knows anything about conditions in eastern Europe will know well that Romania, like other Eastern bloc countries, is in constant contravention of the Helsinki accord on arrangements to allow people freely to leave their country. However, that was my hon. and learned Friend's view and the reason that he gave for not allowing Mr. Papasoiu to stay in Britain.
On 15 March I learnt that Mr. Papasoiu was to be deported on the following day. I telephoned the duty officer that evening. I was also shocked to learn that the deportation was being accelerated. I asked for a message to be passed to my hon. and learned Friend for consideration to be given to the matter being delayed for two or three days in order that the British Romanian Association should at any rate have the opportunity to find a place where this man might go. I telephoned again the following morning. I was completely ignored and Mr. Papasoiu was deported.
What was remarkable about my noble Friend Lord Elton's statement in another place was what it left out. It is here that inquiries must be pursued and lessons learnt for the sake of our reputation for dealing fairly with refugees, especially those who have fled from lion Curtain countries where so many people live in fear.
It is imperative that in cases where an applicant for asylum cannot speak English the arrangements should be such that he can be understood and can understand. The

noble Lord said that the first substantive interview with the Romanian interpreter took place on 21 April. The second interview did not take place until 6 September—four and a half months later.
The British Romanian Association has written to me as follows:
We are assured that the interviewer present at the substantive interviews was both born and educated in Romania. What Lord Elton fails to say is whether that person is also of Romanian origin. There are large Hungarian and German minority populations in Romania, and some of their members speak Romanian in a less than satisfactory way. Stancu Papasoiu formed the impression that the Romanian-speaking interpreter came from Transylvania where there are the largest Hungarian and German minorities who are not on the best of terms with the Romanian population and who in turn are not treated fairly or equally by the Romanian population".
The association's letter then commented on the noble Lord's statement that Mr. Papasoiu claimed that he had been given his first sentence in Romania in either 1969 or 1970. It stated:
No reason was given for the sentencing and it seems to have gone unnoticed that in 1969 or 1970 Papasoiu was a mere 15 or 16 year old boy. With such a serious offence behind him as a minor, Papasoiu could only have reached adulthood in legal terms at the age of 18 with a clearly established record of dissidence. If we are to consider President Ceausescu's public statements labelling people trying to leave Romania either legally or illegally as traitors, we must accept that Papasoiu's offence was one with serious anti-state connotations and therefore political".
I have said that Mr. Papasoiu was held in custody for several months before the British Romanian Association was told of his existence. Not only was that inhumane, but it was stupid because it was bound to increase the man's feelings of isolation and fear and would lead to disorientation and confusion. That is precisely what happened. Here was a young, not well-educated man who fled from his country which has the reputation—as anyone who knows eastern Europe will confirm—of brutal repression. He came to a land which his father had told him was free, but he was arrested immediately on reporting to the police and spent many months in detention.
The second interview with the Romanian interpreter did not take place until months after the first. Ministers say that they carefully studied the records. My noble Friend Lord Elton said that Mr. Papasoiu never revealed any political motivation for his flight but instead said that he disliked working hard and that there was a shortage of food in Romania. That statement is incorrect. Ny noble Friend Lord Bethell has seen the record which makes it quite plain that Papasoiu said that life was unacceptable to him under Communism. That suggests, I should have thought, a political motivation. Whatever the truth, when a man's freedom, possibly his life, is at stake, why are such interviews not taped? Why are they not recorded in a way that cannot be open to misrepresentation?
Secondly, should there not have been some consultation by officials at an early stage with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, whose eastern European department at the very least understands the political situation in Romania? I doubt whether any such approach was made. We are told that the Home Office made inquiries of the Romanian Communist embassy, but as President Ceausescu regards people who leave his country as traitors it is easy to see that the Home Office would get very little help from that quarter.
Is it usual to consult the embassies of totalitarian countries on matters of this kind? Has anyone ever told Home Office officials that life for dissidents in Communist countries is positive hell? What of the confidentiality that is supposed to obtain whenever a refugee asks for political asylum?
The effect of all this was to send a shiver of fear through the east European communities in this country. Poles who have recently jumped ship and gone into hiding have had to be assured that they will be treated fairly. This follows the effort of a humane Home Secretary to ensure fair treatment for Polish refugees and visitors.
Finally, even if there were doubts about Mr. Papasoui's stay, there is no excuse for failing to deal with his case objectively and humanely. The law is not mandatory. Why, therefore, having regard to the nature of the regime in Romania, did not my hon. and learned Friend the Minister exercise his undoubted power of discretion and allow Mr. Papasoui exceptional leave to remain, perhaps only for six months, which would have provided an opportunity to steer him to a third country? Why was this power not used when members of both Houses, Amnesty International—which has an honourable reputation in such matters—and the British Romanian Association, whose representatives had at least spoken to the man sympathetically in his own language, had asked the Minister to do so? There must be an answer to these questions.

The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. David Waddington): With the leave of the House, I want to compliment my hon. Friend the Member for Essex, South-East (Sir B. Braine) on his speech today. He has a fine record for helping the oppressed in the world, and, although we cannot agree about this case, I greatly admire the tenacity that he shows when he believes that a wrong has been done.
My hon. Friend knows that the Government are committed to firm immigration control; firm control applied fairly and even-handedly to the many people who want to come here from all over the world. They are also a Government who are determined to continue this country's long and honourable tradition in the granting of refugee status or asylum. In view of the point raised by the hon. Member for Nottingham, West (Mr. English) during business questions, I should say that the two terms have long been treated as synonymous so far as the rights thereto are concerned, although the consequences are somewhat different when it comes to documentation.
It is a sad commentary on the world in which we live that the number of applications for refugee status or asylum is increasing steadily. The number that we received last year, for example, was far and away the highest that we have ever received. The Government's treatment of those applications has been in accordance with our long traditions, and last year the number of grants of refugee status and asylum was also higher—far higher—than in any previous year. The applicants come from many different parts of the world. Some of the greatest number come from the middle east, from southeast Asia and from Africa. But many other nationalities are involved, including, of course, eastern Europeans.
We must surely apply our refugee and asylum policy in the same even-handed manner as we apply our general immigration policy. We cannot give one part of the world

preferential treatment which is not, and which cannot with our immigration policy, be afforded to other areas. In addition, we have to be careful lest in our wish to help individuals from, say, eastern Europe, we so strain the asylum system as to bring it into disrepute and use it in a way that is grossly unfair to those seeking legal settlement here, but who are turned away because of our firm immigration control.
We must also face the fact that the asylum system offers a way round a country's system of immigration control—have no doubt about that—and experience in other countries is illuminating. The Canadian authorities, for example, recently estimated that 50 per cent. of all asylum applications are manifestly ill-founded, lacking any element of political or religious persecution and based entirely on economic motives. In the Federal Republic of Germany, administrative steps were needed, including the withholding of state financial benefits for the first two years of an application or appeal, in order to stem the staggering flow of applications in 1979–80—no fewer than 150,000. This is a world-wide problem and from our point of view, if we fail to distinguish between the genuine refugee and other applicants, and do so for people from one part of the world alone, we shall end up by putting at a disadvantage those who may be equally deserving and who come from oppressive regimes elsewhere.
I shall not go over the whole history of the case of Mr. Papasoui again. It was spelt out by my noble Friend Lord Elton, but naturally I am saddened that a particular version of events was picked up and repeated, in spite of numerous attempts by myself and others to put the record straight. And of course the version proclaimed in such strident tones by the press—the stories of frog-marching, the failure to point out that it was months after he had arrived here that Mr. Papasoui first produced the story of nine years imprisonment, the completely unsubstantiated allegations of violence at Ashford remand centre—has caused great concern among the general public. I am not surprised. It is bound, inevitably, to have coloured the attitude of many people.
The basic facts are these. While in custody, Mr. Papasoiu was interviewed twice in the presence of a Romanian-born interpreter. I assure my hon. Friend that the interpreter is of Romanian origin and has been used by the Home Office on many occasions. I do not know whether he comes from Transylvania, but he at no time formed the impression that Mr. Papasoiu had any difficulty whatever in understanding him.
My hon. Friend referred to the fact that my noble Friend talked about the "first substantive interview". There is no mystery in that. On the night that Mr. Papasoiu went to Limehouse police station no Romanian interpreter was available, so he was seen by an Italian. We thought that it would be fair to get a Romanian interpreter as soon as possible, and the term "first substantive interview" has been used to describe the interview in the presence of the Romanian interpreter two days later.
The House knows that Mr. Papasoiu had two interviews in the presence of the Romanian interpreter. He gave strikingly different accounts of his previous attempts to leave Romania and of the periods that he spent in prison. I noted what my hon. Friend said about interviews being taped. I can see formidable objections. In any event, I have no doubt of the accuracy of the note taken at the time by the immigration officer and laboriously recorded by him on the file, which I have seen. On the first occasion, Mr.


Papasoiu said that he had been to prison only once, for two months. Some months later he came out with the story of nine years' imprisonment. He was given every opportunity to explain the discrepancies but was unable to do so. I do not think that that can be explained by the circumstances or the length of his detention.
Hon. Members will appreciate that the credibility of the applicant is an important element in decisions of this kind, and is bound to be. More important, Mr. Papasoiu did not say that he was a dissident or that he had taken part in political activities. The main reason that he gave for wanting to leave Romania was that he disliked long working hours and the frequent shortages of food. That is understandable, but it does not make him a refugee—nor, I might say, has the United Nations High Commission for Refugees or the United Kingdom Immigration Advisory Service, both of which were aware of Mr. Papasoiu's case, claimed that he is a refugee.
I remind the House that it was first argued in the press that because Mr. Papasoiu would suffer a penalty on his return for having left Romania without the consent of the authorities, that in itself made him a refugee. That is nonsense. To the best of my knowledge, there is not a country in eastern Europe that does not make liable to penalty those who leave without such permission. As my noble Friend said in another place, acceptance of that argument means accepting the absurd proposition that the entire population of every country behind the Iron Curtain has a potential right of asylum here. That is why the United Nations High Commission for Refugees "Handbook on Procedures for Refugee Recognition" lays down that consideration of punishment for illegal immigration is relevant only if a person qualifies on other grounds as a refugee.

Sir Bernard Braine: rose—

Mr. Waddington: I do not think that I should give way to my hon. Friend, as I have a good deal of ground to cover. I shall try to have a word with him after the debate.
The real question is not whether Mr. Papasoiu was a refugee, but whether he should have been allowed to stay, even though he did not come within the terms of the convention, and had come here not to escape persecution for his political or religious beliefs but in the hope—who can blame him?—of a better life in the West. Those who would say yes must face the immigration consequences of what they are saying.
Those who have been so strident in support of Mr. Papasoiu must ask themselves how many more people would be acceptable, given the problems that we have in this country—the problem of finding jobs, the burden on the welfare state of those who cannot find work, the housing problem and the rest. It is no use saying, "It would have been only one more." Every case affected by immigration control is just one more. Common sense tells one that if one accedes to the argument, "He is only one more" in every case, there is no immigration control.
I recognise that a special responsibility is placed on those who examine applications by people such as Mr. Papasoiu. We must be scrupulously fair and, I believe, be prepared to exercise compassion. However, unless one's judgment in individual cases is to be entirely arbitrary, one must have criteria to go by and apply those criteria to the individual case. Parliament in fact has insisted that there

should be such criteria in immigration control. That is what the immigration rules are all about. Of course there is room for exceptions, but one must be careful not to make such sweeping exceptions that one is making a complete mockery of the rules that Parliament laid down. The rules provide for admission for those entitled to refugee status. Mr. Papasoiu's claim to that status was considered earnestly, but it was not substantiated.
I should have been less than human had I not been troubled greatly by the storm of protest in this case. Clearly, when one faces such a storm one thinks deeply about the correctness of the decision. I have turned the matter over and over in my mind and I still believe that the correct decision was made. There are lessons to be learnt and that is why I am glad that my hon. Friend has come here and raised this matter on the Adjournment. I have noted in particular what my hon. Friend said about the gap between Mr. Papasoiu first being questioned and the United Nations High Commission for Refugees coming on the scene. There was a reason for this. My hon. Friend knows that there was an assumption that Mr. Papasoiu's case was linked with that of another Romanian and that the British Romanian Association had been taking a close interest in this other case and would eventually approach the Home Office. It was, as my hon. Friend said, a Home Office official—

Sir Bernard Braine: Why was the British Romanian Association not told until months following the man's arrest? It would have taken an interest in the case from the beginning. Why was he isolated?

Mr. Waddington: I shall investigate this matter. One has to be a little careful. There are many emigré bodies. One must be careful about the proper procedure to be followed. However, my hon. Friend need have no fear. I shall look into the matter most earnestly and perhaps he will allow me to have a word with him when we have reached a conclusion.
I believe that there is a strong case for formulating arrangements for the notification of asylum cases to an agency at an early stage when a negative decision is contemplated. The refugee unit at the Home Office will in future give formal notification to the UKIAS refugee councillors of all cases when no other agency or hon. Member has previously intervened and a negative decision has been proposed. I shall look into the suggestion of notifying bodies such as the British Romanian Association.
Plainly, my hon. Friend and I will not be able to agree on precisely what was said when he contacted the Home Office on, I believe, the day before Mr. Papasoiu was removed or what was said when my hon. Friend telephoned the Home Office again on the Wednesday morning. There seems to have been some misunderstanding on one side or the other.
I should never deny an hon. Member the opportunity of speaking to me, least of all my hon. Friend. I assure him that he must not hesitate to contact me if he is interested in any other cases. However, I must make it clear that it is plain from what my hon. Friend said that he could not have told me anything that I did not know about the background of the case when he did ring that would have affected my decision.
My hon. Friend also asked about the opportunities afforded to those interested in Mr. Papasoiu's case to find


a third country for him to go to. It must be remembered that Mr. Papasoiu was at liberty from the beginning of December until March. By then, he was in contact with the British Romanian Association and the representative of the UNHCR. The UNHCR tried and failed to secure his entry to France, but getting a third country was known to be an almost impossible task because Mr. Papasoiu had no ties with any third country. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising this important matter.

Missing Persons (Statistics)

Mr. Greville Janner: I am grateful for the opportunity, even at the last gasp of this sitting, to raise the tragic problem and continuing saga of misery represented by the thousands of people who are reported missing. Some are never found, and many could he helped much more than they are.
I started trying to get information about missing persons 10 years ago, and the great difficulty has been the absence of any satisfactory national statistics. Only the Metropolitan police have reasonably full statistics, and even their figures are vague and unsatisfactory.
When I asked recently for figures for the county of Leicestershire and for the United Kingdom as a whole, I was told that the information could be obtained "only at disproportionate cost". The cost of people going adrift, cutting themselves off from society, or being torn away from it is so vast that the suggestion that the Government are not even prepared to set aside resources to find out how many such people there are, where they are, how old they are and what could be done to help them, is disgraceful and surprising.
The best statistics that I have been able to obtain are from the missing persons bureau of the Metropolitan police. I pay tribute to the bureau, which carries out its duties in a kind, considerate and helpful way. Its work is the sort of asset to society that we like to think our police forces were created to provide.
An extrapolation from the Metropolitan police figures shows that the number of young persons and vulnerable adults missing and not traced in the United Kingdom rose from 468 in 1975 and 473 in 1978—the last full year in office of the Labour Government—to 1,176 in 1982. That virtual threefold increase is not unconnected with the current crisis of the economy, disadvantage and unemployment. Those are the best figures that I can find.
We do not know how many youngsters are missing at any one time and we have to treat the available figures with suspicion. For example, the Metropolitan police figures show that 393 young people under 14 years of age went missing last year, but most of those turned up. Most had been taken away by one parent and reported missing by the other or had absconded from care.
There is a staggering and fearful total of missing adolescent girls aged between 14 and 17. In 1973, in the Metropolitan area, the figure was about 1,400 and in 1982 it was 1,846. Again most of them were traced, but how many are missing at any one time no one knows because the figures spill off one into the other and, all too often, even if they turn up, their families do not bother to tell the police.
Again, we have adults who voluntarily cut themselves adrift. They are fully entitled to do this, but all too often they leave behind families, spouses and children. They are left to such marvellous, caring and compassionate agencies as the Salvation Army and sometimes the Samaritans to care for with limited resources and without sufficient support from the Government.
When attempts are made to trace people who are missing and to put them in touch with their relatives, the means of doing so are totally inadequate. There may be some help from the vehicle licensing bureau or the DHSS but, in the main, quite rightly the police are not entitled


to access to the files of those who are on supplementary benefit. Therefore, by insisting on the privacy of those who have gone astray, their families are not helped to contact or find them. There must be a very much better method than the one that we operate at present.
Unlike 1973, when I first asked the House and the Government to consider this matter, there is today at least a national computer. But, surprisingly, police forces are not required to provide information about missing persons. They do so if they wish and entirely voluntarily. To quote the Minister's answer, they are
not required to report to the missing persons bureau cases of missing juveniles or vulnerable adults and do not report to the bureau cases relating to non-vulnerable adults."—[Official Report, 17 March 1983; Vol. 39, c. 218–19.]
We have some cases of youngsters and vulnerable adults reported and none of the others. It means that there is no information.
In ordinary circumstances, this is scarcely a matter of national interest because it tends to be one of personal tragedy and family wretchedness, but sometimes a spotlight is cast into the gloom by a massive tragedy which attracts a vast amount of public attention. That is what has occurred recently as a result of the horrific findings of the police in the garden at Muswell Hill. Without referring to any prosecution case which may or may not result, I am informed by the police that they have found 15 bodies in the garden, all males over the age of 19. Five or so have been identified with reasonable certainty, and one certainly. Only one of the five was recorded as a missing person.
When these bodies came to light there were some 2,000 missing persons whose cases had to be considered in trying to identify the bodies in the garden. There were 100 telephone calls with which the Muswell Hill police had to deal. That may in one sense seem a lot of telephone calls. However, there are 2,000 people presumed missing in the long term whose families do not know where they are. It is a signal of the stress and distress of society that only 100 of those families even bothered to try to find out whether one of their children or relations was lying dismembered in that awful garden in north London.
So we have this spotlight which, once again, has created an illustration not only of the lack of compassion of the present system, because we do not know how many people are missing, but of the enormous cost to the police and the public in ordinary terms of having to try to track down people in the event of a tragedy where people are proved positively not only to be missing but to be dead. What an awful society it is when 15 bodies can lie in a garden and so few people care whether they are members of their family. What a wretched society it is if people can simply disappear and so few care about it.
At any time of the year it is a problem. It is good fortune that this debate is the last before Easter. Holidays for most of us are times of joy, family reunion and religious happiness, but for the lonely and wretched they create a more poignant unhappiness. More suicides take place on Sunday all over the world than on any other day. More families will be devastated in the next few days by someone going missing and destroying not only their immediate happiness but potentially their world. Some—nobody knows or bothers to find out how many—will never turn up again.
There is no simplicity in the figures. I inquired of the police in Leicestershire about the number of people missing in the county. I discovered that there are few. When I inquired at the police station in the area in my constituency with the highest unemployment in Leicestershire—probably over 50 per cent. and with a tremendously high level of disadvantage—I discovered that not one person is missing or untraced. Often the disadvantaged society cares more about neighbours, families and friends than some better-off societies which create more loneliness.
We do not know how we shall cope. All that we know is that the Government and the police have failed to provide statistics. We cannot find out whether a person is away, drifting or missing. Their names will not necessarily be on a computer if they are non-vulnerable adults. There is a mess—chaos—and it is a disgrace to the United Kingdom.
Who is trying to deal with the situation? Organisations such as the Salvation Army and the Samaritans have insufficient resources. The time has come for a full inquiry. When I asked for an inquiry and a written answer refused it, I thought that there must be a mistake. I still believe that Ministers, whatever our policy differences, exercise individual compassion on matters that concern us and want to know the position so that we can cope with it.
I ask the Minister to tell the House that the refusal was an error and that, after further thought, he has decided to hold a full inquiry. I hope that he will say that he intends to create a central, computerised operation for tracking down missing persons for their own sake, for the sake of their families and for the sake of society. I hope that the Minister will say that when these statistics are gathered, they will be used in a way that will enable people to trace their relatives and to find their friends. I hope that the statistics will not be in the form used by the Metropolitan police, but that they will be broken down further.
I ask the Minister to use his influence to channel resources to the Salvation Army and all the organisations that help to look after missing persons. I draw his attention to the sad fact that the Salvation Army does not deal with juveniles. There are gaps throughout the social service operation and they should be plugged.
The House should draw the public's attention to the problem and ask people to take care of each other over the holiday and to recognise the problems that holidays create; not merely to report those who go missing, but to help by reporting people who are traced. That would save much time-wasting for the police. We should also make this plea to hospitals which care for people suffering loss of memory. I am told that, on occasions, hospitals fail to inform relatives that they have found their elderly folk and are looking after them.
Finally, I hope that resources can be extended to prevent people from going adrift when there is no need for it. I shall give one example. Leicester city council, as part of its prodigious efforts to help our citizens through the worst recession that has ever hit the city, has created enterprise workshops. Yesterday my right hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Foot) and I visited a workshop where small bleeper contraptions were being made for the use of elderly people. The idea is that if they go adrift, the attention of the nursing home or the people caring for them will be directed to them. People may smile at the concept of the elderly not knowing where they are,


but it is another aspect of the tragedy of missing persons, highlighted, as it is, by the vast number of missing adolescent girls, by the hundreds of youngsters, some of whom are lost never to be found, by the fifteenfold tragedy of Muswell Hill and by the failure of the Government to provide the resources that proper statistics would reveal are necessary.
I ask the Minister to give a positive and helpful reply—a request that will be echoed throughout the country in thousands of homes which are literally bereaved as a result of this problem.
In conclusion, I hope that you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, will enjoy your holiday, as I hope we all will, without being struck by this problem or any other which is avoidable by the efforts of ourselves and the society in which we live.

The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. Patrick Mayhew): I am certain that many Members will share the concern that has been expressed today by the hon. and learned Member for Leicester, West (Mr. Janner) about the problem of missing persons. His great interest in the subject has been known to me for the past 10 years. He has done much to bring the subject to public notice.
I fully appreciate the unhappiness that is caused to relatives and friends of such people, even when their absence is of only short duration. However, the figures that are available—I shall come to this aspect of the matter in more detail in a moment—show that the great majority of persons reported missing are subsequently traced. I know that the police perform an extremely thorough and conscientious job in tracing missing persons, and that every effort is made to ensure that they are found as soon as possible. It is another issue, however, whether in every case they should be put in contact with those who are looking for them. The hon. and learned Gentleman, speaking eloquently on the wireless this morning and in his speech this afternoon, suggested, whether deliberately or not, that in every case those who are looking for members of their family who had left or had gone missing should be put back in contact with them. I thought I heard him imply this morning that a reunion should be compelled.

Mr. Greville Janner: indicated dissent.

Mr. Mayhew: The hon. and learned Gentleman says that that was not his intention, and I accept that at once.

Mr. Janner: I should like to make it clear that it is the privilege of an adult Briton of sound mind to disappear. I hoped that I had made that plain because I spoke of the necessity for privacy in the records of the police and DHSS.
But it is also the duty of society to bring people together if they can reasonably do so, and if those involved wish to come together—or at least to pass on the means by which that can be achieved.

Mr. Mayhew: I am grateful to the hon. and learned Gentleman for clarifying that point. It gives rise to questions of privacy and liberty from an adult who goes adrift, although, of course, the considerations are different for children.
I thought that the hon. and learned Gentleman's speech was a trifle marred by his suggestion that the regrettable increase in the numbers of people reported missing was in some way attributable to the Government's economic

policies. At the end of his speech, he shot that horse by saying that in the most disadvantaged area of his constituency, fortunately, no one was missing. We must approach these matters without reference to party considerations. In all conscience, there is enough to worry us without that.
When a person has been reported as missing in the metropolitan area of London and initial inquiries have failed to trace him his details are recorded in the index of the missing persons bureau. Provincial forces that have reason to believe that a missing person has left their area may also record them as missing in that index. In all cases where anyone is taken to hospital by police in the London area as a result of an accident or illness in the street and, for some reason, his relatives are not informed, or where a dead body cannot be identified, or where a person is found wandering, a message is sent to the missing persons bureau and particulars are recorded there and checked to see if they match those of any of the missing persons. Similarly, in all cases where the police have reason to believe that a juvenile who comes to their notice may be a missing person, the index will be checked.
The hon. and learned Gentleman paid a generous tribute to the missing persons bureau maintained by the Metropolitan police, and I am grateful to him for that. I know that it will be received in that quarter with pleasure.
Where the police consider that publicity would be useful, especially in the case of missing juveniles, they would probably offer particulars to the local or national press and to the Police Gazette, which goes to all police forces and is regularly used for the national circulation of details of missing persons.
Some of the statistics published in the written answer given on 17 March to the hon. and learned Member appear to have been misinterpreted in a recent press article. For example, there appears to have been some double counting, with the result that the numbers of children under the age of 14 reported missing and untraced during the past 10 years were said to have amounted to 940 for the Metropolitan police district and to 340 for other forces. When figures are taken up and given wider circulation, it is right to record that the true numbers remaining untraced, from whatever day those persons went missing, were at the end of 1982 about 250 for the Metropolitan police district and 60 for provincial police forces.
An analysis made earlier this month of boys under 14 years of age in the missing persons index showed that 137 were still recorded as missing in the Metropolitan police district. Of those, 97—or 71 per cent.—were believed to be in the company of one of their natural parents, although their whereabouts were not known to the police or, of course, to the parent who reported the child missing. Another 20—or 15 per cent.—were children who had absconded from local authority homes and were believed to have returned to their itinerant parents. Only a small number, about 19 cases or 14 per cent., were, therefore, still missing in the commonly accepted sense of this word.
That draws attention to the difficulties that may arise in the use of the category "missing persons". There are certain difficulties in determining whether a person ought properly to be regarded as missing. In the instances that I have just mentioned, where there is a broken home, to the parent with whom a child normally lives, when the child goes missing, goes to the other parent, and that fact is not known to the first parent, the child is a missing person. To some extent, I suppose that one cannot cavil


at that. Certainly the gravity of the case is less in that instance than when a child wanders off, becomes lost, and no one sees him or her again. So there are difficulties of categorisation.
Is an adult who leaves his home voluntarily and of his own accord, without leaving a forwarding address, to be considered a missing person? Many people would say "Not necessarily so". As the hon. and learned Gentleman fairly reminded us, the law of England and Wales allows adults freedom of movement, and there is no obligation on them to keep in touch with relatives or friends, although there is, rightly, an obligation on them to maintain a wife and children. Again, there is the case where police are contacted when a child has been sent to the shops, has failed to return after several hours, and then does so. His attention may have become distracted, he may have met friends, or he may have stopped somewhere. Is that child to be considered a missing person?
The point, therefore, needs to be made: is the term "missing person" somewhat loosely used to cover those different situations? The hon. and learned Gentleman is entitled to say that at least there should be an agreed nomenclature so that, quite apart from the figures and the reporting of numbers, we know that we are all talking about an agreed class of person when we talk about missing people. There is also the question of when, or at what stage, someone should be regarded as missing. In the Metropolitan police district, the practice is that when a person turns up within 48 hours the details are not normally fully recorded in the missing persons index.
It has been suggested that at any one time there are about 25,000 missing persons. Again, that appears to arise from a misunderstanding of the figures in the written answer of 17 March. The figure of 21,000 people recorded only locally in 1982 was not recorded centrally, because the cases were cleared up within 48 hours. The figure of about 6,700 cases that were recorded centrally included about 5,400 cases that were cleared up during the year. That left fewer than 1,400 persons remaining untraced in

the Metropolitan police district at the end of the year. That is a high figure, of course, but it shows a very different picture from the figure of 25,000. Before taking a mistaken, misleading or exaggerated view of what is admittedly a serious position, it is important to recognise that fact.
I have mentioned the difficulties of definition, because they highlight the problems that will occur of attempting to keep unified statistics on a national basis. As I said to the hon. and learned Gentleman on 21 February, the methods and equipment that police forces use to trace missing persons are for each chief officer of police to determine. This matter was considered in 1973 and 1975 by the Association of Chief Police Officers. However, a study is to be carried out to assess the feasibility of converting the present arrangement of a manually-based index in London to a computer-based system. There are difficulties. I hope that the hon. and learned Gentleman will regard it as a positive response that I recognise the strength of his feelings on the subject for a centrally-maintained index, and I am prepared to ask the Association of Chief Police Officers to look at the subject again to see whether chief officers would now find it of practical use for police forces from all over the country to contribute to and operate a national index for the police service. I undertake to refer that matter to the association. Slightly different questions arise about whether the voluntary services should operate and contribute to that. Matters of confidentiality arise, as I know the hon. and learned Gentleman will understand.
I am grateful to him for raising the matter. It is right that it should be brought to public attention. I hope that we shall be able to make progress and that the hon. and learned Gentleman thinks that I have dealt sufficiently with the subject in the short time available.

Resolved, That this House do now adjourn—[Mr. Lang.]

And accordingly the House, having continued to sit till Three o'clock, adjourned till Monday 11 April, pursuant to the Resolution of the House of 24 March.